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THE    PUPPET    SHOW    OF    MEMORY 


THE  PUPPET  SHOW 
OF  MEMORY 


BY 

MAURICE    BARING 


BOSTON 
LITTLE,    BROWN,    AND    COMPANY 

1922 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


6,C 

6 


NOTE 

MY  thanks  are  due  to  Messrs.  Methuen  for  allowing 
me  to  use  in  Chapters  XVI.-XIX.  some  matter 
which  has  already  appeared  in  A  Year  in  Russia 
and  Russian  Essays,  two  books  published  by  them ;  to 
Mr.  Leo  Maxse  for  allowing  me  to  use  an  article  on 
Sarah  Bernhardt  which  appeared  in  the  National  Review, 
and  has  been  re-written  for  this  book ;  to  Father  C.  C. 
Martindale  and  Mr.  Desmond  MacCarthy  for  kindly  cor- 
recting the  proofs. 

M.  B. 


. 


TO 
J. 


VII 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 
I. 

The  Nursery                    .... 

I'AGR 
I 

II. 

The  Nursery  and  the  Schoolroom  . 

14 

III. 

Membland   ...... 

3' 

IV. 

Membland    ...... 

46 

Y. 

School         .            .                                  . 

68 

VI. 

Eton  ...                                   . 

87 

VII. 

Germany      ...... 

118 

VIII. 

Italy,  Cambridge,  Germany,  London 

138 

IX. 

Oxford  and  Germany     .... 

165 

X. 

Paris             .                                   ... 

181 

XI. 

Copenhagen            ..... 

20S 

XII. 

Sarah  Bernhardt 

227 

XIII. 

Rome             ...... 

=45 

XIV. 

Russia  and  Manchuria  .... 

263 

XV. 

Battles       ...... 

287 

XVI. 

London,  Manchuria,  Russia 

305 

XVII. 

Russia:  The  Beginning  of  the  Revolution 

•     332 

XVIII. 

St.  Petersburg      ..... 

356 

XIX. 

Tr.wi  i   in  Russia  ..... 

367 

XX. 

South  Russia,  Journalism,  London    . 

386 

XXI. 

Constantinople  (1909)     .... 

397 

XXII. 

The  Balkan  War,  1912   .... 

.     406 

XXIII. 

Constantino  I'M   <,nck  more  (1912) 

418 

XXIV. 

The  Fascination  of  Russia 

450 

I  MUX 

439 

ILLUSTRATIONS 

Coombe  Cottage      ......  Frontispiece 

FACING    PAGE 

Portraits  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  by  the  Author  (age  7), 

drawn  in  1881  ......    228 

Sarah  Bernhardt  in  the  'eighties      ....    229 


THE 

PUPPET   SHOW  OF   MEMORY 

CHAPTER    I 
THE  NURSERY 

WHEN  people  sit  down  to  write  their  recollections 
they  exclaim  with  regret,  "  If  only  I  had  kept  a 
diary,  what  a  rich  store  of  material  I  should  now 
have  at  my  disposal  !  "  I  remember  one  of  the  masters  at 
Eton  telling  me,  when  I  was  a  boy,  that  if  I  wished  to  make  a 
fortune  when  I  was  grown  up,  I  had  only  to  keep  a  detailed 
diary  of  every  day  of  my  life  at  Eton.  He  said  the  same  thing 
to  all  the  boys  he  knew,  but  I  do  not  remember  any  boy  of  my 
generation  taking  his  wise  advice. 

On  the  other  hand,  for  the  writer  who  wishes  to  recall  past 
memories,  the  absence  of  diaries  and  notebooks  has  its  com- 
pensations. Memory,  as  someone  has  said,  is  the  greatest  of 
artists.  It  eliminates  the  unessential,  and  chooses  with  careless 
skill  the  sights  and  the  sounds  and  the  episodes  that  are  best 
worth  remembering  and  recording.  The  first  thing  I  can 
remember  is  a  Christmas  tree  which  I  think  celebrated  the 
Christmas  of  1876.  It  was  at  Shoreham  in  Kent,  at  a  house 
belonging  to  Mr.  H.  B.  Mildmay,  who  married  one  of  my  mother's 
sisters.  I  was  two  years  old,  and  I  remember  my  Christmas 
present,  a  large  bird  with  yellow  and  red  plumage,  which  for  a 
long  time  afterwards  lived  at  the  top  of  the  nursery  wardrobe. 
It  was  neither  a  bird  of  Paradise  nor  a  pheasant  ;  possibly  only 
a  somewhat  flamboyant  hen  ;  but  I  loved  it  dearly,  and  it 
irradiated  the  nursery  to  me  for  at  least  two  years. 

The  curtain  then   falls  and  rises  again  on  the  nursery  of 
37    Charles    Street,    Berkeley    Square,    London.     The   nursery 
1 


2       THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

epoch,  which  lasted  till  promotion  to  the  schoolroom  and  lessons 
began,  seems  to  children  as  long  as  a  lifetime,  just  as  houses 
and  places  seem  to  them  infinitely  large.  The  nursery  was  on 
the  third  floor  of  the  house,  and  looked  out  on  to  the  street. 
There  was  a  small  night -nursery  next  door  to  it,  which  had 
coloured  pictures  of  St.  Petersburg  on  the  wall. 

I  can  remember  the  peculiar  roar  of  London  in  those  days  ; 
the  four-wheelers  and  hansoms  rattling  on  the  macadam  pave- 
ment through  the  fog,  except  when  there  was  straw  down  in 
the  street  for  some  sick  person  ;  and  the  various  denizens  of 
the  streets,  the  lamplighter  and  the  mufhn-man  ;  often  a 
barrel-organ,  constantly  in  summer  a  band,  and  sometimes  a 
Punch  and  Judy.  During  the  war,  when  the  streets  began  to 
be  darkened,  but  before  the  final  complete  darkness  set  in  in 
1917,  London  looked  at  night  very  much  as  it  was  in  my  child- 
hood. But  the  strange  rumbling  noise  had  gone  for  ever. 
Sometimes  on  one  of  the  houses  opposite  there  used  to  be  an 
heraldic  hatchment.  The  nursery  was  inhabited  by  my  brother 
Hugo  and  myself,  our  nurse,  Hilly,  and  two  nurserymaids, 
Grace  Hetherington,  and  Annie.  Grace  was  annexed  by  me  ; 
Annie  by  Hugo.  Hilly  had  been  nurse  to  my  sisters  and,  I 
think,  to  my  elder  brothers  too.  She  had  the  slightly  weather- 
beaten  but  fresh  agelessness  of  Nannies,  and  her  most  violent 
threat  was :  "  I'll  bring  my  old  shoe  to  you,"  and  one  of  her 
most  frequent  exclamations  :  "  Oh,  you  naughty  boy,  you  very 
naughty  boy ! "  The  nursery  had  Landseer  pictures  in  gilt 
frames,  and  on  the  chest  of  drawers  between  the  two  windows 
a  mechanical  toy  of  an  entrancing  description.  It  was  a  square 
box,  one  side  of  which  was  made  of  glass,  and  behind  this  glass 
curtain,  on  a  small  platform,  a  lady  sat  dressed  in  light  blue 
silk  at  an  open  spinet ;  a  dancing  master,  in  a  red  silk  doublet 
with  a  powdered  wig  and  yellow  satin  knee-breeches,  on  one 
side  of  it,  conducted,  and  in  the  foreground  a  little  girl  in  short 
skirts  of  purple  gauze  covered  with  spangles  stood  ready  to 
dance.  When  you  wound  up  the  toy,  the  lady  played,  the  man 
conducted  elegantly  with  an  open  score  in  one  hand  and  a 
baton  in  the  other,  and  the  little  girl  pirouetted.  It  only 
played  one  short,  melancholy,  tinkling,  but  extremely  refined 
dance-tune. 

At  one  of  the  top  windows  of  the  house  opposite,  a  little 
girl  used  to  appear  sometimes.     Hugo  and  I  used  to  exchange 


THE  NURSERY  3 

signals  with  her,  and  we  called  her  Miss  Rose.  Our  mute 
acquaintance  went  on  for  a  long  time,  but  we  never  saw  her 
except  across  the  street  and  at  her  window.  We  did  not  wish 
to  see  more  of  her.  Nearer  acquaintance  would  have  marred 
the  perfect  romance  of  the  relation. 

There  were  two  forms  of  light  refreshment  peculiar  to 
the  nursery,  and  probably  to  all  nurseries :  one  was  Albert 
biscuits,  and  the  other  toast-in-water.  Children  call  for  an 
Albert  biscuit  as  men  ask  for  a  whisky-and-soda  at  a  club, 
not  from  hunger,  but  as  an  adjunct  to  conversation  and  a 
break  in  monotony.  At  night,  after  we  had  gone  to  bed,  we 
used  often  to  ask  monotonously  and  insistently  for  a  drink  of 
water.  "Hilly,  I  want  a  drink  of  water"  ;  but  this  meant, 
not  that  one  was  thirsty,  but  that  one  was  frightened  and 
wanted  to  see  a  human  being.  All  my  brothers  and  sisters, 
I  found  out  afterwards,  had  done  the  same  thing  in  the  same 
way,  and  for  the  same  reason,  but  the  tradition  had  been 
handed  down  quite  unconsciously.  I  can't  remember  how  the 
nursery  epoch  came  to  an  end  ;  it  merges  in  my  memory 
without  any  line  of  division,  into  the  schoolroom  period  ;  but 
the  first  visits  in  the  country  certainly  belonged  to  the  nursery 
epoch. 

We  used  to  go  in  the  summer  to  Coombe  Cottage,  near 
Maiden,  an  ivy-covered,  red-brick  house,  with  a  tower  at  one 
end,  a  cool  oak  hall  and  staircase,  a  drawing-room  full  of  water- 
colours,  a  room  next  to  it  full  of  books,  with  a  drawing-table 
and  painting  materials  ready,  and  a  long  dining-room,  of  which 
the  narrow  end  was  a  sitting-room,  and  had  a  verandah  looking 
out  on  to  the  garden.  There  was  also  a  kitchen  garden,  lawns, 
a  dairy,  a  gardener,  Mr.  Baker,  who  made  nosegays,  a  deaf-and- 
dumb  under-gardener  who  spoke  on  his  fingers,  a  farmyard, 
and  a  duck-pond  into  which  I  remember  falling. 

Coombe  was  an  enchanted  spot  for  us.  My  recollection  of 
it  is  that  of  a  place  where  it  was  always  summer  and  where  the 
smell  of  summer  and  the  sounds  of  summer  evening  used  to 
make  the  night-nursery  a  fairy  place;  and  sometimes  in  the 
morning,  red-coated  soldiers  used  to  march  past  playing  "  The 
Girl  I  left  behind  me,"  with  a  band  of  drums  and  fifes.  The 
uniforms  of  the  soldiers  were  as  bright  as  the  poppies  in  the 
field,  and  that  particular  tune  made  a  lasting  impression  on  me. 
I  never  forgot  it.     I  can  remember  losing  my  first  front  tooth 


4  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

at  Coombe  by  tying  it  on  to  a  thread  and  slamming  the  door, 
and  I  can  remember  my  sisters  singing,  "  Where  are  you  going 
to,  my  pretty  Maid  ?  "  one  of  them  acting  the  milkmaid,  with 
a  wastepaper  basket  under  her  arm  for  a  pail.  Best  of  all,  I 
remember  the  garden,  the  roses,  the  fruit,  trying  to  put  salt 
on  a  bird's  tail  for  the  first  time,  and  the  wonderful  games  in 
the  hayfields. 

We  are  probably  all  of  us  privileged  at  least  once  or  twice 
in  our  lives  to  experience  the  indescribable  witchery  of  a  perfect 
summer  night,  when  time  seems  to  stand  still,  the  world  becomes 
unsubstantial,  and  Nature  is  steeped  in  music  and  silver  light, 
quivering  shadows  and  mysterious  sound,  when  such  a  pitch 
of  beauty  and  glamour  and  mystery  is  achieved  by  the  darkness, 
the  landscape,  the  birds,  the  insects,  the  trees  and  the  shadows, 
and  perhaps  the  moon  or  even  one  star,  that  one  would  like  to 
say  to  the  fleeting  moment  what  Faust  challenged  and  defied 
the  devil  to  compel  him  to  cry  out :  "  Verweile,  Du  bist  schon." 

It  is  the  moment  that  the  great  poets  have  sometimes  caught 
and  made  permanent  for  us  by  their  prodigious  conjury  :  Shake- 
speare, in  the  end  of  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  when  Lorenzo  and 
Jessica  let  the  sounds  of  music  creep  into  their  ears,  and 
wonder  at  patines  of  bright  gold  in  the  floor  of  heaven  ;  Keats, 
when  he  wished  to  cease  upon  the  midnight  with  no  pain  ; 
Musset,  in  the  "Nuit  de  Mai";  Victor  Hugo,  when,  on  their 
lovely  brief  and  fatal  bridal  night,  Hernani  and  Dona  Sol  fancy 
in  the  moonlight  that  sleeping  Nature  is  watching  amorously 
over  them  ;  and  the  musicians  speak  this  magic  with  an  even 
greater  certainty,  without  the  need  of  words  :  Beethoven,  in 
his  Sonata ;  Chopin,  again  and  again  ;  Schumann,  in  his  lyrics, 
especially  "  Friihlingsnacht  "  ;  Schubert,  in  his  "  Serenade." 

I  have  known  many  such  nights  :  the  dark  nights  of  Central 
Russia  before  the  harvest  ends,  when  the  watchman's  rattle 
punctuates  and  intensifies  the  huge  silence,  and  a  far-off  stamp- 
ing dance  rhythm  and  a  bleating  accordion  outdo  Shakespeare 
and  Schubert  in  magic  ;  June  nights  in  Florence,  when  you 
couldn't  see  the  grass  for  fireflies,  and  the  croaking  of  frogs 
made  a  divine  orchestra  ;  or  in  Venice,  on  the  glassy  lagoon, 
when  streaks  of  red  still  hung  in  the  west ;  May  nights  by  the 
Neckar  at  Heidelberg,  loud  with  the  jubilee  of  nightingales 
and  aromatic  with  lilac  ;  a  twilight  in  May  at  Arundel  Park, 
when  large  trees,  dim  lawns,  and  antlered  shapes  seemed  to  be 


THE  NURSERY  5 

part  of  a  fairy  revel ;  and  nights  in  South  Devon,  when  the 
full  September  moon  made  the  garden  and  the  ilex  tree  as 
unreal  as  Prospero's  island. 

But  I  never  in  my  whole  life  felt  the  spell  so  acutely  as  in 
the  summer  evenings  in  the  night  nursery  at  Coombe  Cottage, 
when  we  went  to  bed  by  daylight  and  lay  in  our  cots  guessing 
at  the  pattern  on  the  wall,  to  wake  up  later  when  it  was  dark, 
half  conscious  of  the  summer  scents  outside,  and  of  a  bird's 
song  in  the  darkness.  The  intense  magic  of  that  moment  I 
have  never  quite  recaptured,  except  when  reading  Keats'  "Ode 
to  the  Nightingale  "  for  the  first  time,  when  the  door  on  to  the 
past  was  opened  wide  once  more  and  the  old  vision  and  the 
strange  sense  of  awe,  unreality,  and  enchantment  returned. 

But  to  go  back  to  nursery  life.  Our  London  life  followed 
the  ritual,  I  suppose,  of  most  nurseries.  In  the  morning  after 
our  breakfast  we  went  down,  washed  and  scrubbed  and  starched, 
into  the  dining-room,  where  breakfast  was  at  nine,  and  kisM-d 
our  father  before  he  drove  to  the  city  in  a  phaeton,  and  played 
at  the  end  of  the  dining-room  round  a  pedestalled  bust  of  one 
of  the  Popes.  Then  a  walk  in  the  Park,  and  sometimes  as  a 
treat  a  walk  in  the  streets,  and  possibly  a  visit  to  Cremer's,  the 
toy-shop  in  Bond  Street.  Hugo  and  I  detested  the  Park,  and 
the  only  moment  of  real  excitement  I  remember  was  when  one 
day  Hilly  told  me  not  to  go  near  the  flower-beds,  and  I  climbed 
over  the  little  railing  and  picked  a  towering  hyacinth.  Police 
intervention  was  immediately  threatened,  and  I  think  a  police- 
man actually  did  remonstrate  ;  but  although  I  felt  for  some 
hours  a  pariah  and  an  outcast,  there  was  none  the  less  an  after- 
taste of  triumph  in  the  tears  ;  attrition,  perhaps,  but  no  con- 
trition. 

When  we  got  to  be  a  little  older  .  .  .  older  than  what  ?  I 
don't  know  .  .  .  but  there  came  our  moment  when  we  joined 
our  sisters  every  morning  to  say  our  prayers  in  my  mother's 
bedroom,  every  day  before  breakfast.  They  were  short  and 
simple  prayers — the  "  Our  Father  "  and  one  other  short  prayer. 
Nevertheless,  for  years  the  "Our  Father"  was  to  me  a  mysterious 
and  unintelligible  formula,  all  the  more  so,  as  I  said  it  entirely 
by  the  sound,  and  not  at  all  by  the  sense,  thinking  thai 
"  Whichartinheaven  "  was  one  word  and  "Thykingdomcome  " 
another.  I  never  asked  what  it  meant.  I  think  in  sume  dim 
way  I  felt  that,  could  I  understand  it,  something  of  its  value 


6  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

as  an  invocation  would  be  lost  or  diminished.     I  also  remember 
learning  at  a  very  early  age  the  hymn,  "  There  is  a  green  hill 
far  away,"  and  finding  it   puzzling.      I  took  it  for  granted 
that  most  green  hills  had  city  walls  round  them,  though  this 
particular  one  hadn't.     Besides  going  to  Coombe  we  went  at 
the  end  of  the  summer  to  Devonshire,  to  Membland,  near  the 
villages  of  Noss  Mayo,  and  Newton,  and  not  far  from  the  river 
Yealm,  an  arm  of  the  sea.     It  was  when  getting  ready  for  the 
first  of  these  journeys  that  I  remember,  while  I  was  being 
dressed  in  the  nursery,  my  father's  servant,  Mr.  Deacon,  came 
up  to  the  nursery  and  asked  me  whether  I  would  like  a  ticket. 
He  then  gave  me  a  beautiful  green  ticket  with  a  round  hole  in 
it.     I  asked  him  what  one  could  do  with  it,  and  he  said,  "  In 
return  for  that  ticket  you  can  get  Bath  buns,  Banbury  cakes, 
jam-rolls,  crackers,  and  pork  sausages."     In   the   bustle   of 
departure  I  lost  it.     Paddington  Station  resounded  with  the 
desperate  cries  of  the  bereaved  ticket -holder.     In  vain  I  was 
given  half  a  white  first -class  ticket.     In  vain  Mr.  Bullock,  the 
guard,  offered  every  other  kind  of  ticket.     It  was  not  the  same 
thing.     That  ticket,  with  the  round  hole,  had  conjured  up 
visions    of    wonderful    possibilities  and   fantastic    exchanges. 
Sausages  and  Banbury  cakes  and  Bath  buns  (all  of  them  magic 
things),  I  knew,  would  be  forthcoming  to  no  other  ticket.     The 
loss  was  irreparable.     I  remember  thinking  the  grown-up  people 
so  utterly  wanting  in  understanding  when  they  said :  "  A  ticket  ? 
Of  course,  he  can  have  a  ticket.     Here's  a  ticket  for  the  dear 
little  boy."     As  if  that  white  ticket  was  anything  like  the 
unique  passport  to  gifts  new  and  unheard  of,  anything  like 
that  real  green  ticket  with  the  round  hole  in  it.     At  the  end  of 
one  of  these  journeys,  at  Kingsbridge  Road,  the  train  ran  off  the 
line.    We  were  in  a  saloon  carriage,  and  I  remember  the  accident 
being  attributed  to  that  fact  by  my  mother's  maid,  who  said 
saloon  carriages  were  always  unsafe.     It  turned  out  to  be  an 
enjoyable  accident,  and  we  all  got  out  and  I  was  given  an 
orange. 

Mr.  Bullock,  the  guard,  was  a  great  friend  of  all  of  us  children  ; 
and  our  chief  pleasure  was  to  ask  him  a  riddle :  "  Why  is  it 
dangerous  to  go  out  in  the  spring  ?  "  I  will  leave  it  to  the 
reader  to  guess  the  answer,  with  merely  this  as  a  guide,  that  the 
first  part  of  the  answer  to  the  riddle  is  "  Because  the  hedges  are 
shooting,"  and  the  second  part  of  the  answer  is  peculiarly 


THE  NURSERY  7 

appropriate  to  Mr.  Bullock.     1  am  afraid  Mr.  Bullock  never 
saw  why,  although  no  doubt  he  enjoyed  the  riddle. 

I  have  already  said  that  I  cannot  fix  any  line  of  division 
between  the  nursery  and  the  schoolroom  epochs,  but  before  I 
get  on  to  the  subject  of  the  schoolroom  I  will  record  a  few  things 
which  must  have  belonged  to  the  pre-schoolroom  period. 

One  incident  which  stands  out  clearly  in  my  mind  is  that  of 
the  fifty-shilling  train.  There  were  at  that  time  in  London 
two  toy-shops  called  Cremer.  One  was  in  New  Bond  Street, 
No.  27,  I  think,  near  Tessier's,  the  jeweller  ;  another  in  Regent 
Street,  somewhere  between  Liberty's  and  Piccadilly  Circus. 

In  the  window  of  the  Regent  Street  shop  there  was  a  long 
train  with  people  in  it,  and  it  was  labelled  fifty  shillings.  In  the 
year  1921  it  is  only  a  small  mechanical  train  that  can  be  bought 
for  fifty  shillings.  I  can't  remember  whether  I  had  reached 
the  schoolroom  when  this  happened,  but  I  know  I  still  wore  a 
frock  and  had  not  yet  reached  the  dignity  of  trousers.  I  used 
constantly  to  ask  to  go  and  look  at  this  shop  window  and  gaze 
at  the  fifty-shilling  train,  which  seemed  first  to  be  miraculous 
for  its  size,  and,  secondly,  for  its  price.  Who  in  the  world  could 
have  fifty  shillings  all  at  once  ? 

I  never  went  so  far  as  thinking  it  was  possible  to  possess 
that  train  ;  but  I  used  to  wonder  whether  there  were  people 
in  the  world  who  could  store  up  fifty  shillings.  We  were  each 
of  us  given  sixpence  every  Saturday,  but  it  was  always  spent 
at  once,  nor  could  I  calculate  or  even  conceive  how  long  it 
would  take  to  save  enough  sixpences  to  make  fifty  shillings. 

One  evening,  when  we  were  at  Coombe,  in  the  summer,  I  was 
sent  for  to  the  drawing-room  and  then  told  to  go  into  the  dining- 
room.  I  opened  the  door,  and  there,  on  the  floor,  was  the  fifty- 
shilling  train.  If  a  fairy  had  flown  into  the  room  and  lifted  me 
to  the  ceiling  I  could  not  have  thought  a  fact  more  miraculous. 
From  that  moment  I  knew  for  certain  that  miracles  could 
happen  and  do  happen,  and  subsequent  experience  has  con- 
firmed the  belief.  Alas  1  the  funnel  of  the  engine  was  soon 
broken,  and  Mr.  Toombs,  the  carpenter,  was  said  to  be  able  to 
mend  it,  and  I  looked  forward  to  another  miracle.  He  did, 
but  in  a  way  which  was  hardly  satisfactory  considered  as  a 
miracle,  although  perfect  for  practical  usage.  He  turned 
on  a  lathe  a  solid  funnel  made  of  black  wood,  but  not  hollow, 
and  he  stuck  it  in  where  the  funnel  ought  to  be,      1  pretended 


8  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

I  was  satisfied,  but  my  private  belief  was  that  Mr.  Toombs 
didn't  know  how  to  make  funnels. 

Another  thing  which  happened  when  I  was  six  years  old 
was  a  visit  to  the  Drury  Lane  pantomime,  which  was  Mother 
Goose.  This,  of  course,  with  a  transformation  scene  with  a 
large  fairy  with  moving  emerald  butterfly-like  wings  and  Arthur 
Roberts  who,  when  playing  a  trumpet,  spat  out  all  his  teeth  on 
to  the  floor  as  if  they  were  an  encumbrance,  was  an  ecstasy 
beyond  words. 

Another  event  almost  more  exciting  was  the  arrival  of  a 
doll's  house.     I  played  with  dolls,  but  not  as  girls  do,  mothering 
them  and  dressing  them.     Mine  were  little  tiny  dolls,  and  could 
not  be  dressed  or  undressed,  and  they  were  used  as  puppets.     I 
made  them  open  Parliament,  act  plays  and  stories,  and  most 
frequently  take  the  part   of   the  French  Merovingian  kings. 
This  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  schoolroom  period,  and  the 
dolls  were  called  Chilperic,  Ermengarde,  Clothilde,  Blanche  de 
Castille,  Fredegonde,  Brunehaut,  Galswinthe,  and  P6pin  le  Bref, 
and  other  names  belonging  to  the  same  remote  period  of  history. 
One  day  I  was  told  that  a  doll's  house  was  coming.     I  couldn't 
sleep  for  excitement,  and  Hilly,  Grace,  and  Annie  gravely  held 
a  conclave  one  night  when  I  was  in  bed  and  supposed  to  be 
asleep,  over  their  supper,  and  said  that  so  exciting  a  thing  as  a 
doll's  house  ought  not  to  be  allowed  me.     It  would  ruin  my 
health.     I  feigned  deep  sleep,  and  the  next  day  pretended  to 
have  lost  all  interest  in  dolls'  houses,  but  when  it  came,  all  its 
furniture  was  taken  out,  put  on  the  floor,  and  arranged  in  two 
long  rows,  with  a  throne  at  one  end,  to  enable  Chilperic  and 
Fredegonde  to  open  Parliament. 

One  year  in  London  I  actually  saw  Queen  Victoria  drive  to 
the  opening  of  Parliament  in  a  gilded  coach  with  a  little  crown 
perched  on  her  head  and  an  ermine  tippet.  It  was  not  quite  a 
satisfactory  crown,  but  still  it  was  a  crown,  and  the  coach  had 
the  authentic  Cinderella  quality. 

To  go  back  to  the  dolls  for  a  moment.  I  used  to  go  to 
Membland  sometimes  for  Easter  with  my  father  and  mother 
when  the  rest  of  the  family  stayed  in  London,  and  Margaret 
used  to  write  me  letters  from  the  dolls,  beginning  "  Cher  Papa  " 
and  ending  "  Ermengarde  "  or  "  Chilperic,"  as  the  case  might 
be.  These  letters  used  to  cover  me  with  confusion  and  morti- 
fication before  the  grown-up  people,  as  I  kept  it  a  secret  that  I 


THE  NURSERY  9 

ever  played  with  dolls,  knowing  it  to  be  thought  rather  eccentric, 
and  liable  to  be  misunderstood,  especially  when  there  were 
other  boys  about,  which  there  were. 

Of  course,  in  the  nursery,  Hugo  and  I  had  endless  games  of 
pretending,  especially  during  bath-time  (baths  were  hip-baths), 
and  I  remember  Hugo  refusing  to  have  his  bath  because  when 
we  were  playing  at  fishes  I  seized  the  shark's  part  and  wouldn't 
let  him  be  a  shark.  "  Hilly,"  he  wailed,  "  I  will  be  a  shark." 
But  no,  I  wouldn't  hear  of  it,  and  he  had  to  be  a  whale,  which 
the  shark,  so  I  said,  easily  mastered. 

Promotion  to  the  schoolroom  meant  lessons  and  luncheon 
downstairs.     The    schoolroom    was    inhabited    by    my    three 
sisters,  Elizabeth,  Margaret,  and  Susan,  and  ruled  over  by  the 
French  governess,  Cherie.     I  thought  Cherie  the  most  beautiful, 
the  cleverest,  and  altogether  the  most  wonderful  person  in  the 
world.     My  earliest  recollection  of  her  almost  magical  powers 
was  when  she  took  a  lot  of  coloured  silks  and  put  them  behind 
a  piece  of  glass   and  said  this  was   une  vision.     I   believed 
there  was  nothing  she  didn't  know  and  nothing  she  couldn't 
do.     I  was  also  convinced  that  one  day  I  would  marry  her. 
This  dream  was  sadly  marred  by  the  conduct  of  my  sister 
Elizabeth.     Elizabeth  was  the  eldest,  Margaret  the  second,  and 
Susan  the  third,  of  my  sisters.     I  firmly  believed  in   fairies. 
Elizabeth  and  Margaret  fostered  the  belief  by  talking  a  great 
deal  about  their  powers  as  fairies,  and  Elizabeth  said  she  was 
Queen  of  the  fairies.     One  day  she  said  :  "  Just  as  you  are 
going  to  be  married  to  Cherie,  and  when  you  are  in  church,  I 
will  turn  you  into  a  frog."     This  was  said  in  the  schoolroom  in 
London.     The  schoolroom  was  on  the  floor  over  the  nursery. 
No  sooner  had  Elizabeth  made  this  ominous  remark  when  I 
ran  to  the  door  and  howled  in  a  manner  which  penetrated  the 
whole  house  from  the  housemaids'  rooms  upstairs  to  the  house- 
keeper's room  in  the  basement.     Screams  and  yells  startled  the 
whole  house.     Hilly  came  rushing  from  the  nursery ;   Cherie 
came  from  her  bedroom,  where  she  had  been  doing  some  sewing  ; 
Dimmock,  my  mother's  maid,  whom  we  called  D.,  came  down- 
stairs, saying  :  "  Well,  I  never  " ;  Sheppy,  the  housekeeper,  peered 
upwards  from  the  subterranean  housekeeper's  room  ;  and,  lastly, 
my  mother  came  from  the  drawing-room.     The  cause  of  the 
crisis  was  explained  by  me  through  sobs.     "  She  says  "... 
sob,  sob,  yell  ..."  that  she's  a  fairy  "...  sob,  sob  .  .  . 


io  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

"and  that  she'll  turn  me  into  a  frog"  .  .  .  sob,  sob  .  .  .  "when 
I  marry  Cherie.  .  .  ."  All  attempts  to  calm  me  were  in  vain. 
Elizabeth  was  then  appealed  to,  and  the  whole  house  in  chorus 
said  to  her,  "  Say  you're  not  a  fairy."  But  Elizabeth  became 
marble-constant.  She  said,  "  How  can  I  say  I'm  not  a  fairy 
when  I  am  one  ?  "  A  statement  which  I  felt  to  be  all  too  true 
and  well  founded.  More  sobs  and  yells.  Universal  indignation 
against  Elizabeth.  My  paroxysm  was  merely  increased  by  all 
the  efforts  everyone  made  to  soothe  me.  Elizabeth  was  cajoled, 
persuaded,  argued  with,  bribed,  threatened,  exhorted,  blamed, 
anathematised,  entreated,  appealed  to,  implored,  but  all  in 
vain.  She  would  not  budge  from  her  position,  which  was  that 
she  was  a  fairy. 

The  drama  proceeded.  Nothing  stopped  the  stream  of 
convulsive  sobs,  the  flood  of  anguish — not  all  Cherie's  own 
assurances  that  the  wedding  would  be  allowed  to  take  place. 

Elizabeth  was  taken  downstairs  to  be  reasoned  with,  and 
after  an  hour  and  a  half's  argument,  and  not  before  she  had 
been  first  heavily  bribed  with  promises  and  then  sent  to  bed, 
she  finally  consented  to  compromise.  She  said,  as  a  final 
concession,  "  I'll  say  I'm  not  a  fairy,  but  I  am."  When  this 
concession  was  wrung  from  her  the  whole  relieved  household 
rushed  up  to  tell  me  the  good  news  that  Elizabeth  had  said  she 
was  not  a  fairy.  The  moment  I  heard  the  news  my  tears 
ceased,  and  perfect  serenity  was  restored.  But  although 
Elizabeth  capitulated,  Margaret  was  firmer,  and  she  continued 
to  mutter  (like  Galileo)  for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon,  "  But  / 
am  a  fairy  all  the  same." 

Margaret  was  the  exciting  element  in  the  schoolroom.  She 
was  often  naughty,  and  I  remember  her  looking  through  the 
schoolroom  window  at  Coombe,  while  I  was  doing  lessons 
with  Cherie,  and  making  faces.  CheYie  said  to  her  one  day : 
"  Vous  feriez  rougir  un  regiment."  Elizabeth  was  pleasantly 
frivolous,  and  Susan  was  motherly  and  sensible,  and  supposed 
to  be  the  image  of  her  father,  but  Margaret  was  dramatic  and 
imaginative,  and  invincibly  obstinate. 

She  knew  that  for  Cherie's  sake  I  didn't  like  admitting  that 
the  English  had  ever  defeated  the  French  in  battle,  so  every 
now  and  then  she  would  roll  out  lists  of  battles  fought  by  the 
English  against  the  French  and  won,  beginning  with  Crecy, 
Poitiers,  getting  to  Agincourt  with  a  crescendo,  and  ending 


THE  NURSERY  n 

up  in  a  tremendous  climax  with  Waterloo.  To  which  I  used  to 
retort  with  a  battle  called  Bou vines,  won  by  Philippe  Auguste, 
in  some  most  obscure  period  over  one  of  the  Plantagenet  kings, 
and  with  Fontenoy.     I  felt  them  both  to  be  poor  retorts. 

Another  invention  of  Margaret's  was  a  mysterious  Princess 
called  Ix)uiseaunt,  who  often  came  to  see  her,  but  as  it  happened 
always  when  we  were  out.  If  we  suddenly  came  into  the  room, 
Margaret  would  say,  "  What  a  pity !  Louiseaunt  has  just  been 
here.  She'll  be  so  sorry  to  have  missed  you."  And  try  as  we 
would,  we  always  just  missed  Louiseaunt. 

If  we  went  out  without  Margaret,  Louiseaunt  was  sure  to 
come  that  day.  We  constantly  just  arrived  as  Louiseaunt  had 
left,  and  the  inability  ever  to  hit  off  Louiseaunt 's  precise  visiting 
hours  was  a  lasting  exasperation. 

Another  powerful  weapon  of  Margaret's  was  recitation.  She 
used  to  recite  in  English  and  in  French,  and  in  both  languages 
the  effect  on  me  was  a  purge  of  pity  and  terror.  I  minded  most 
"  Lord  Ullin's  Daughter,"  declaimed  with  melodramatic  gesture, 
and  nearly  as  much  a  passage  from  Hernani,  beginning — 

"  Monts  d'Aragonl    Galice  I    Estramadoure  ! 
Oh!    Je  porte  malheur  a  tout  ce  qui  m'entoure  ! " 

which  she  recited,  rolling  her  eyes  in  a  menacing  attitude. 

"  Lord  Ullin's  Daughter,"  said  with  the  help  of  Susan,  whose 
rendering  had  something  reassuringly  comfortable  and  homely 
about  it — Susan  couldn't  say  her  "  r's,"  and  pronounced  them  like 
"  w's  " — in  contradistinction  to  Margaret's  sombre  and  vehement 
violence,  did  a  little  to  mitigate  the  effect,  but  none  the  less  it 
frightened  me  so  much  that  it  had  to  be  stopped.  Hugo  was 
not  yet  in  the  schoolroom  then. 

Lessons  in  London  began  soon  after  breakfast.  They  were 
conducted  by  Cherie  and  by  an  English  governess,  Mrs.  Christie, 
who  used  to  arrive  in  a  four-wheeler,  always  the  same  one,  from 
Kentish  Town,  and  teach  us  English,  Arithmetic,  and  Latin. 
Mrs.  Christie  was  like  the  pictures  of  Thackeray,  with  spectacles, 
white  bandeaux,  and  a  black  gown.  During  lessons  she  used  to 
knit.  She  was  in  permanent  mourning,  and  we  knew  we  mu^t 
never  ask  to  learn  "  Casabianca,"  as  her  little  boy  who  had  died 
had  learnt  it.  She  used  to  arrive  with  a  parcel  of  book>  from 
the  London  Library,  done  up  in  a  leather  strap.  She  was  the 
fust  of  a  long  line  of  teachers  who  failed  to  teach  me  Arithmetic. 


12  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

She  used  to  stay  the  whole  morning,  or  sometimes  only  part  of 
it.  During  lessons  she  used  to  have  a  small  collation,  a  glass  of 
claret,  and  a  water  biscuit.     She  also  taught  other  families. 

At  Coombe  the  schoolroom  looked  out  on  the  lawn,  a  long,  flat 
Lawn  which  went  down  by  steps  on  a  lower  lawn,  at  the  bottom  of 
which  we  had  our  own  gardens  and  where  there  was  a  summer- 
house.  I  remember  sitting  in  the  schoolroom  next  to  CheYie 
while,  with  a  large  knitting  needle,  she  pointed  out  the  words  pain 
and  vin  written  large  in  a  copy-book,  with  a  picture  of  a  bottle 
of  red  wine  and  a  picture  of  a  piece  of  bread,  to  show  what  the 
words  meant,  while  Margaret  was  copying  out  Clarence's  dream 
in  a  copy-book  and  murmuring  something  about  skulls,  and 
all  the  time  through  the  window  framed  with  clematis  came 
the  sound,  the  magic  sound  of  the  mowing-machine,  the  noise 
of  bees,  and  a  smell  of  summer,  tea-roses  and  of  hayfields. 

On  certain  days  of  the  week  Mademoiselle  Ida  Henry  used  to 
come  and  give  us  music  lessons.  Our  house  was  saturated  with 
an  atmosphere  of  music.  My  mother  played  the  violin  and  was 
a  fine  concertina  player,  and  almost  before  I  could  walk  I  had 
violin  lessons  from  no  less  a  person  than  Mr.  Ries.  Until 
I  was  three  I  was  called  Strad,  and  I  think  my  mother  cherished 
the  dream  that  I  would  be  a  violinist,  but  I  showed  no  aptitude. 

My  first  music  lesson  I  received  from  Mademoiselle  Ida  over 
Stanley  Lucas'  music  shop  in  Bond  Street.  I  was  alone  in 
London  with  my  mother  and  father,  one  November,  and  I 
suppose  about  six.  Mademoiselle  Ida  was  very  encouraging, 
and — unduly,  as  it  turned  out — optimistic,  and  said :  "  II  a 
des  mains  faites  pour  jouer  le  piano,"  and  soon  my  morceau 
was  Diabelli's  duets.  While  I  was  learning  Diabelli's  duets, 
Susan  was  learning  a  Fantasia  by  Mozart,  which  I  envied  without 
malice.  It  had  one  particular  little  run  in  it  which  I  learnt  to 
play  with  one  finger.  One  day  I  played  this  downstairs  in  the 
drawing-room.  A  few  days  later  Mademoiselle  Ida  came  to 
luncheon,  and  my  mother  said  :  "  Play  that  little  bar  out  of  the 
Mozart  to  Mademoiselle  Ida."  I  was  aghast,  feeling  certain, 
and  quite  rightly,  that  Mademoiselle  Ida  would  resent  my 
having  encroached  on  a  more  advanced  morceau,  and  indeed, 
as  it  became  clear  to  her  what  the  bar  in  question  was,  she  at 
once  said :  "  Je  ne  veux  pas  que  tu  te  meles  des  morceaux  des 
autres."  That  was  what  I  had  feared.  My  mother  was  quite 
unconscious    of    the    solecism  that  she  was  committing,  and 


THE  NURSERY  13 

pressed  me  to  play  it.  Finally  I  hummed  the  tune,  which 
satisfied  both  parties. 

I  never  liked  music  lessons  then  or  ever  afterwards,  but  I 
enjoyed  Mademoiselle  Ida's  conversation  and  company  almost 
more  than  anything.  Every  word  she  ever  said  was  treasured. 
One  day  she  said  to  Mrs.  Christie  :  "  Bonjour,  Madame  Christ^. 
J'ai  bien  mal  a  la  tete."  "  Je  suis  tres  fachee  de  le  savoir, 
Mademoiselle  Henri,"  said  Mrs.  Christie  in  icy  tones,  and  this 
little  dialogue  was  not  destined  ever  to  be  forgotten  by  any 
of  us.     We  used  often  afterwards  to  enact  the  scene. 

Elizabeth  and  Susan  learnt  the  piano,  and  Margaret  was 
taught  the  violin  by  Herr  Ludwig,  a  severe  German  master. 
John,  my  eldest  brother,  was  an  accomplished  pianist  and 
organist  ;  Everard,  my  third  brother,  played  the  piccolo.  Cecil 
sang,  and  my  mother  was  always  bewailing  that  he  had  not 
learnt  music  at  Eton,  because  his  house-master  said  it  would  be 
more  useful  for  him  to  learn  how  to  shoe  a  horse.  This,  alas ! 
did  not  prove  to  be  the  case,  as  he  has  seldom  since  had  the 
opportunity  of  making  use  of  his  skill  as  a  blacksmith.  The 
brothers  were  all  at  Eton  when  I  first  went  into  the  schoolroom, 
but  they  often  used  to  visit  us  in  the  evening  at  tea-time,  and 
sometimes  they  used  to  listen  when  Cherie  read  aloud  after  tea. 

Echoes  of  the  popular  songs  of  the  day  reached  both  the 
nursery  and  the  schoolroom,  and  the  first  I  can  remember  the 
tunes  of  are  :  "  Pop  goes  the  Weasel,"  which  used  to  be  sung  to 
me  in  the  nursery  ;  "  Tommy,  make  room  for  your  Uncle  "  ;  "  My 
Grandfather's  Clock";  "Little  Buttercup"  from  Pinafore, 
which  used  to  be  played  on  a  musical  box;  "  Oh  where  and  oh 
where  is  my  little  wee  Dog?  "  with  its  haunting  refrain. 

Later  we  used  to  sing  in  chorus  and  dancing  a  Pas  dc  trois,  a 
song  from  a  Gaiety  burlesque  : 

"  We'll  never  come  back  any  more,  boys. 
We'll  never  come  back  any  more." 

And,  later  still,  someone  brought  back  to  London  for  Chi  isi  - 
mas  the  unforgettable  tune  of  'Two  Lovely  Black  Eyes/' 
which  in  after-life  I  heard  all  over  the  world — on  the  lagoon 
of  Venice  and  in  the  villages  of  Mongolia. 

One  day  after  luncheon — on  Sunday — John  played  the  "  Two 
Grenadiers  "  at  the  pianoforte,  and  I  remember  the  experience 
being  thrilling,  if  a  little  alarming,  but  a  revelation,  and  a 
first  introduction  into  the  world  of  music. 


CHAPTER    II 
THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM 

LIFE  was  divided  between  London  from  January  to 
August,  then  Devonshire  till  after  Christmas.  In 
the  nursery  and  the  early  part  of  the  schoolroom 
period  we  used  to  go  to  Coombe  in  the  summer.  Coombe 
seemed  to  be  inextricably  interwoven  with  London  and  parallel 
to  it  ;  and  I  remember  dinner-parties  happening,  and  a  Hun- 
garian band  playing  on  the  lawn,  unless  I  have  dreamt  that. 
But  there  came  a  time,  I  think  I  must  have  been  six  or  seven, 
when  Coombe  was  sold,  and  we  went  there  no  more,  and  life 
was  confined  to  Membland  and  Charles  Street.  London  in  the 
winter,  and  summer  in  Devonshire,  with  sometimes  brief  visits 
to  Devonshire  at  Easter  and  Whitsuntide,  and  brief  visits  to 
London  in  November,  when  my  father  and  mother  went  up  by 
themselves. 

It  is  not  any  false  illusion  or  the  glamour  of  the  past  that 
makes  the  whole  of  that  period  of  life  until  school-time  was 
reached  seem  like  fairyland.  I  thought  so  at  the  time,  and 
grown-up  people  who  came  to  Coombe  and  Membland  felt, 
I  think,  that  they  had  come  to  a  place  of  rare  and  radiant 
happiness. 

But  I  will  begin  with  London  first. 

This  was  the  routine  of  life.  We  all  had  breakfast  at  nine 
downstairs.  I  remember  asking  how  old  my  father  was,  and 
the  answer  was  fifty-three.  As  he  was  born  in  1828  and  I  was 
born  in  1874, 1  must  have  been  seven  years  old  at  the  time  of  this 
question.  I  always  thought  of  my  father  as  fifty-three  years  old. 
My  brothers  John,  Cecil,  and  Everard  were  at  Eton  at  Warre's 
House,  and  Hugo  was  five  years  old  and  still  in  the  nursery. 

After  breakfast,  at  about  a  quarter  to  ten,  my  father  drove 
to  the  City,  and  he  never  came  home  to  luncheon  except  on 
Saturdays. 

«4 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  15 

We  went  for  a  walk  with  Cherie,  and  after  this  lessons 
lasted  from  eleven,  I  think,  till  two,  in  the  schoolroom. 

The  schoolroom  was  a  long  room  with  three  windows  looking 
out  on  to  the  street.  There  was  a  cottage  pianoforte  at  an 
angle,  and  in  the  niche  of  one  of  the  windows  a  small  table, 
where  Ch£rie  used  to  sit  and  read  the  Daily  News  in  the  morning. 
We  each  of  us  had  a  cupboard  for  our  toys,  and  there  were  some 
tall  bookcases,  containing  all  the  schoolroom  books,  Noel  and 
Chapsal's  Grammar,  and  many  comfortable,  shabby  books  of 
fairy-tales.  We  each  of  us  had  a  black  writing-desk,  with  a 
wooden  seat  attached  to  it,  in  which  we  kept  our  copybooks, 
and  at  which  we  did  our  work.  A  long  table  ran  right  down 
the  middle  of  our  room,  where  we  did  our  lessons,  either  when 
everyone  did  them  together,  collectively,  with  Cherie,  who  sat 
at  the  head  of  the  table,  or  with  Mrs.  Christie,  who  sat  at  one 
side  of  the  table  at  the  farther  end. 

At  two  o'clock  we  all  came  down  to  luncheon,  and  as  my 
mother  was  at  home  to  luncheon  every  day,  stray  people  used 
to  drop  in,  and  that  was  a  great  excitement,  as  the  guests  used 
to  be  discussed  for  hours  afterwards  in  the  schoolroom. 

Lady  Dorothy  Nevill,  who  lived  in  the  same  street,  used 
often  to  come  to  luncheon  and  make  paper  boats  for  me.  She 
used  also  to  shock  me  by  her  frank  expression  of  Tory  principle, 
not  to  say  prejudice,  as  we  were  staunch  Liberals,  and  Lady 
Dorothy  used  to  say  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  dreadful  man. 

Mr.  Alfred  Montgomery  was  a  luncheon  visitor,  and  one 
day  Bobby  Spencer,  who  was  afterwards  to  be  Margaret's 
husband,  was  subjected  to  a  rather  sharp  schoolroom  criticism 
owing  to  the  height  of  his  collars.  I  sometimes  used  to  em- 
barrass Cherie  by  sudden  interpellations.  One  day,  when  she 
had  refused  a  dish,  I  said  :  "  Prends  en,  Cherie,  toi  qui  es  si 
gourmande."  Another  day  at  luncheon  a  visitor  called  Colonel 
Edgecombe  bet  my  mother  a  pound  there  would  be  war  with 
France  within  three  years.  I  expect  he  forgot  the  bet,  but  I 
never  did.  Another  time  my  mother  asked  Mademoiselle  Ida 
what  was  the  most  difficult  piece  that  existed  for  the  pianoforte, 
and  Mademoiselle  Ida  said  Liszt's  "  Spinnelied."  My  mother  bet 
her  a  pound  she  would  learn  it  in  a  month's  time  (and  she  did). 

There  were  two  courses  at  luncheon,  some  meat  and  a  sweet, 
and  then  cheese,  and  we  were  not  allowed  to  have  the  sweet 
unless  we  had  the  meat  first,  but  we  could  always  have  two 


16  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

helpings  if  we  liked.  After  luncheon  we  went  for  another  walk. 
At  five  there  were  more  lessons,  and  then  schoolroom  tea,  pre- 
sided over  by  Cherie,  and  after  that  various  games  and  occupa- 
tions, and  sometimes  a  visit  to  the  drawing-room. 

There  were  two  drawing-rooms  downstairs,  a  front  drawing- 
room  with  three  windows  looking  out  on  to  the  street,  and  a 
back  drawing-room  at  right  angles  to  it.     The  drawing-rooms 
had  a  faded  green  silk  on  the  walls.     Over  the  chimney-piece 
there  was   a  fine  picture  by  Cuyp,  which  years  later  I  saw 
in  a  private  house  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.     The  room  was 
full  of  flowers  and  green  Sevres  china.     In  the  back  drawing- 
room  there  was  a  grand  pianoforte  and  some  bookcases,  and 
beyond  that  a  room  called  the  gilding-room,  a  kind  of  workshop 
where  my  mother  did  gilding.     I  only  once  saw  a  part  of  the 
operation,  which  consisted  of  making  size.     Later  on  this  room 
became  the  organ  room  and  was  enlarged.     The  drawing-room 
led  to  a  small  landing  and  a  short  staircase  to  the  front  hall. 
On  the  landing  wall  there  was  an  enormous  picture  of  Venice, 
by  Birket  Foster,  and  from  this  landing,  when  there  was  a 
dinner-party,  we  used  to  peer  through  the  banisters  and  watch 
the  guests   arriving.     We  were  especially  forbidden   to  slide 
down  the  banisters,  as  my  mother  used  to  tell  us  that  when  she 
was  a  little  girl  she  had  slid  down  the  banisters  and  had  a  terrible 
fall  which  had  cut  open  her  throat,  so  that  when  you  put  a 
spoon  in  her  mouth  it  came  out  again  through  her  throat. 
When  Hugo,  the  last  of  the  family  to  be  told  this  story,  heard 
it,  he  said,  "  Did  you  die  ?  "     And  my  mother  was  obliged  to 
say  that  she  did  not. 

On  the  ground  floor  was  a  room  looking  out  into  the  street, 
called  the  library,  but  it  only  possessed  two  bookcases  let  into 
Louis  xv.  white  walls,  and  this  led  into  the  dining-room,  beyond 
which  was  my  father's  dressing-room,  where,  when  we  were 
quite  small,  we  would  watch  him  shave  in  the  morning. 

Dinner  downstairs  was  at  eight,  and  when  we  were  small  I 
was  often  allowed  to  go  down  to  the  beginning  of  dinner  and 
draw  at  the  dinner-table  on  a  piece  of  paper,  and  the  girls  used 
to  come  down  to  dessert,  bringing  an  occupation  such  as  needle- 
work. We  were  always  supposed  to  have  an  occupation  when  we 
were  downstairs,  and  I  remember  Susan,  being  asked  by  CheYie 
what  needlework  she  was  going  to  take  to  the  dining-room, 
saying  :  "  Mon  bas,  ma  chemise,  et  ma  petite  wobe,  Chewie." 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  17 

On  Saturday  afternoons  we  often  had  a  treat,  and  went  to 
the  German  Reed's  entertainment  and  Corney  Grain,  or  to 
Maskelyne  and  Cook,  and  Hengler's  Circus,  and  on  Sundays 
we  often  went  to  the  Zoo,  or  drove  down  to  Coombe  when 
Coombe  existed. 

Lessons  were  in  the  hands  of  Cherie  and  Mrs.  Christie. 
CheYie  taught  me  to  read  and  write  in  French,  French  history 
out  of  Lame"  Fleury,  not  without  arguments  on  my  part  to 
learn  it  from  the  bigger  grown-up  book  of  Guizot,  and  French 
poetry.  Every  day  began  with  a  hideous  ordeal  called  "  La 
Page  d'Ecriture."  Cherie  would  write  a  phrase  in  enormous 
letters  in  a  beautiful  copy-book  handwriting  on  the  top  line  of 
the  copy-book,  and  we  had  to  copy  the  sentence  on  every  other 
line,  with  a  quill  pen.  Mrs.  Christie,  besides  struggling  with 
my  arithmetic,  used  to  teach  us  English  literature,  and  make 
us  learn  passages  from  Shakespeare  by  heart,  which  were  quite 
unintelligible  to  me,  and  passages  from  Byron,  Walter  Scott, 
Campbell,  and  Southey,  and  various  pieces  from  the  Children's 
Garland  and  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.  I  enjoyed 
the  latter  whole-heartedly. 

Sometimes  Mrs.  Christie  and  CheYie  used  to  have  conversa- 
tions across  the  children,  as  it  were,  during  lessons.  I  remember 
Mrs.  Christie  saying  to  CheYie  while  I  was  doing  my  lessons  by 
CheYie 's  side  one  day :  "  That  child  will  give  you  more  trouble 
than  all  the  others." 

I  liked  history  lessons,  especially  Lame"  Fleury 's  French 
history  and  mythology ;  and  in  Lame  Fleury 's  French  history 
the  favourite  chapter  was  that  beginning  :  "  Jean  11.  dit  le  bon 
commenca  son  regne  par  un  assassinat."  The  first  book  I  read 
with  Mrs.  Christie  was  called  Little  Willie,  and  described  the 
building  of  a  house,  an  enchanting  book.  I  did  not  like  any 
of  the  English  poetry  we  read,  not  understanding  how  by  any 
stretch  of  the  imagination  it  could  be  called  poetry,  as  Shake- 
speare blank  verse  seemed  to  be  a  complicated  form  of  prose 
full  of  uncouth  words  ;  what  we  learnt  being  Clarence's 
dream,  King  Henry  iv.'s  battle  speeches,  which  made  me  most 
uncomfortable  for  CheYie's  sake  by  their  anti-French  tone,  and 
passages  from  Childe  Harold,  which  I  also  found  difficult  to 
understand.  The  only  poems  I  remember  liking,  which  were 
revealed  by  Mrs.  Christie,  were  Milton's  L' Allegro  and  Pen- 
seroso,  which  I  copied  out  in  a  book  as  soon  as  I  could  write. 
2 


18  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

One  day  she  read  me  out  Gray's  Elegy  and  I  was  greatly  im- 
pressed. "  That  is,"  she  said,  "  the  most  beautiful  Elegy  in  the 
language."  "  Is  it  the  most  beautiful  poem  in  the  language  ?  " 
I  asked,  rather  disappointed  at  the  qualification,  and  hankering 
for  an  absolute  judgment.  "  It's  the  most  beautiful  Elegy  in 
the  language,"  she  said,  and  I  had  to  be  content  with  that. 

I  don't  want  to  give  the  impression  that  we,  any  of  us,  dis- 
liked Mrs.  Christie's  lessons  in  English  literature.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  enjoyed  them,  and  I  am  grateful  for  them  till  this  day. 
She  taught  us  nothing  soppy  nor  second-rate.  The  piece  of  her 
repertoire  I  most  enjoyed,  almost  best,  was  a  fable  by  Gay  called 
"  The  Fox  at  the  Point  of  Death."  She  was  always  willing 
to  explain  things,  and  took  for  granted  that  when  we  didn't 
ask  we  knew.  This  was  not  always  the  case.  One  of  the  pieces 
I  learnt  by  heart  was  Shelley's  "  Arethusa,"  the  sound  of  which 
fascinated  me.  But  I  had  not  the  remotest  idea  that  it  was 
about  a  river.     The  poem  begins,  as  it  will  be  remembered  : 

"  Arethusa  arose 
From  her  couch  of  snows 
In  the  Acroceraunian  mountains." 

For  years  I  thought  "  Acroceraunian  "  was  a  kind  of  pin- 
cushion. 

Mrs.  Christie  had  a  passion  for  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  for  the 
Waverley  Novels.  "  You  can't  help,"  she  said,  "  liking  any 
King  of  England  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  written  about." 
She  instilled  into  us  a  longing  to  read  Sir  Walter  Scott  by  pro- 
mising that  we  should  read  them  when  we  were  older.  One  of 
the  most  interesting  discussions  to  me  was  that  between  CheYie 
and  Mrs.  Christie  as  to  what  English  books  the  girls  should  be 
allowed  to  read  in  the  country.  Mrs.  Christie  told,  to  illus- 
trate a  point,  the  following  story.  A  French  lady  had  once 
come  across  a  French  translation  of  an  English  novel,  and  seeing 
it  was  an  English  novel  had  at  once  given  it  to  her  daughter  to 
read,  as  she  said,  of  course,  any  English  novel  was  fit  for  the 
jenne  personne.  The  novel  was  called  Les  Papillons  de  Nuit. 
"  And  what  do  you  think  that  was  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Christie. 
"  Moths,  by  Ouida  !  " 

The  first  poem  that  really  moved  me  was  not  shown  me  by 
Mrs.  Christie,  but  by  Mantle,  the  maid  who  looked  after  the  girls. 
It  was  Mrs.  Hemans' :  "  Oh,  call  my  Brother  back  to  me,  I  cannot 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  19 

play  alone."  This  poem  made  me  sob.  I  still  think  it  is  a 
beautiful  and  profoundly  moving  poem.  Besides  English,  Mrs. 
Christie  used  to  teach  us  Latin.  I  had  my  first  Latin  lesson  the 
day  after  my  eighth  birthday.  This  is  how  it  began :  "  Sup- 
posing," said  Mrs.  Christie,  "  you  knocked  at  the  door  and  the 
person  inside  said,  '  Who's  there  ?  '  What  would  you  say  ?  " 
I  thought  a  little,  and  then  half-unconsciously  said,  "  I." 
"  Then,"  said  Mrs.  Christie,  "  that  shows  you  have  a  natural 
gift  for  grammar."  She  explained  that  I  ought  reasonably 
to  have  said  "  Me."  Why  I  said  "  I,"  I  cannot  think.  I  had 
no  notion  what  her  question  was  aiming  at,  and  I  feel  certain 
I  should  have  said  "  Me  "  in  real  life.  The  good  grammar  was 
quite  unintentional. 

As  for  arithmetic,  it  was  an  unmixed  pain,  and  there  was  an 
arithmetic  book  called  Ibbister  which  represented  to  me  the  final 
expression  of  what  was  loathsome.  One  day  in  a  passion  with 
CheYie  I  searched  my  mind  for  the  most  scathing  insult  I  could 
think  of,  and  then  cried  out,  "  Vieille  Ibbister." 

I  learnt  to  read  very  quickly,  in  French  first.  In  the  nursery 
Grace  and  Annie  read  me  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales  till  they  were 
hoarse,  and  as  soon  as  I  could  read  myself  I  devoured  any  book 
of  fairy-tales  within  reach,  and  a  great  many  other  books  ;  but  I 
was  not  precocious  in  reading,  and  found  grown-up  books  im- 
possible to  understand.  One  of  my  favourite  books  later  was 
The  Crofion  Boys,  which  Mrs.  Christie  gave  me  on  6th  November 
1883,  as  a  "  prize  for  successful  card-playing."  It  is  very 
difficult  for  me  to  understand  now  how  a  child  could  have 
enjoyed  the  intensely  sermonising  tone  of  this  book,  but  I 
certainly  did  enjoy  it. 

I  remember  another  book  called  Romance,  or  Chivalry  and 
Romance.  In  it  there  was  a  story  of  a  damsel  who  was  really 
a  fairy,  and  a  bad  fairy  at  that,  who  went  into  a  cathedral 
in  the  guise  of  a  beautiful  princess,  and  when  the  bell  rang  at 
the  Elevation  of  the  Host,  changed  into  her  true  shape  and 
vanished.  I  consulted  Mrs.  Christie  as  to  what  the  Elevation 
of  the  Host  meant,  and  she  gave  me  a  clear  account  of  what 
Transubstantiation  meant,  and  she  told  me  about  Henry  vin., 
the  Defender  of  the  Faith,  and  the  Reformation,  and  made  no 
comment  on  the  truth  or  untruth  of  the  dogma.  Transub- 
stantiation seemed  to  me  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world, 
as  it  always  does  to  children,  and  I  privately  made  op  my  mind 


20  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

that  on  that  point  the  Reformers  must  have  been  mistaken. 
One  day  CheYie  said  for  every  devoir  I  did,  and  for  every  time  I 
wasn't  naughty,  I  should  be  given  a  counter,  and  if  I  got  twenty 
counters  in  three  days  I  should  get  a  prize.  I  got  the  twenty 
counters  and  sallied  off  to  Hatchard's  to  get  the  prize.  I  chose 
a  book  called  The  Prince  of  the  Hundred  Soups  because  of  its 
cover.  It  was  by  Vernon  Lee,  an  Italian  puppet-show  in 
narrative,  about  a  Doge  who  had  to  eat  a  particular  kind  of 
soup  every  day  for  a  hundred  days.  It  is  a  delightful  story, 
and  I  revelled  in  it.  On  the  title-page  it  was  said  that  the 
book  was  by  the  author  of  Belcaro.  I  resolved  to  get  Belcaro 
some  day  ;  Belcaro  sounded  a  most  promising  name,  rich  in 
possible  romance  and  adventure,  and  I  saved  up  my  money 
for  the  purpose.  When,  after  weeks,  I  had  amassed  the 
necessary  six  shillings,  I  went  back  to  Hatchard's  and  bought 
Belcaro.  Alas,  it  was  an  aesthetic  treatise  of  the  stiffest  and 
driest  and  most  grown-up  kind.  Years  afterwards  I  told 
Vernon  Lee  this  story,  and  she  promised  to  write  me  another 
story  instead  of  Belcaro,  like  The  Prince  of  the  Hundred  Soups. 
The  first  book  I  read  to  myself  was  Alice  in  Wonderland,  which 
John  gave  to  me.  Another  book  I  remember  enjoying  very 
much  was  The  King  of  the  Golden  River,  by  Ruskin. 

I  enjoyed  my  French  lessons  infinitely  more  than  my  English 
ones.  French  poetry  seemed  to  be  the  real  thing,  quite 
different  from  the  prosaic  English  blank  verse,  except  La 
Fontaine's  Fables,  which,  although  sometimes  amusing,  seemed 
to  be  almost  as  prosy  as  Shakespeare.  They  had  to  be  learnt 
by  heart,  nevertheless.  They  seemed  to  be  in  the  same  relation 
to  other  poems,  Victor  Hugo's  "  Napoleon  II."  and  "  Dans 
L'Alcove  sombre,"  which  I  thought  quite  enchanting,  as  meat 
was  to  pudding  at  luncheon,  and  I  was  not  allowed  to  indulge 
in  poetry  until  I  had  done  my  fable,  but  not  without  much 
argument.  I  sometimes  overbore  Cherie's  will,  but  she  more 
often  got  her  way  by  saying :  "  Tu  as  tou jours  voulu  ecrire 
avec  un  stylo  avant  de  savoir  ecrire  avec  une  plume."  I  learnt 
a  great  many  French  poems  by  heart,  and  made  sometimes 
startling  use  of  the  vocabulary.  One  day  at  luncheon  I  said 
to  CheYie  before  the  assembled  company  :  "  Ch6rie,  comme  ton 
front  est  nubile  !  "  the  word  nubile  having  been  applied  by  the 
poet,  Casimir  de  la  Vigne,  to  Joan  of  Arc. 

The  first  French  poem  which  really  fired  my  imagination 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  21 

was  a  passage  from  Les  Enfants  d'Edouard,  a  play  by  the  same 
poet,  in  which  one  of  the  little  princes  tells  a  dream,  which 
Margaret  used  to  recite  in  bloodcurdling  tones,  and  his  brother, 
the  Duke  of  York,  answers  lyrically  something  about  the  sunset 
on  the  Thames.1  Those  lines  fired  my  imagination  as  nothing 
else  did.  We  once  acted  a  scene  from  this  play,  Margaret  and 
I  playing  the  two  brothers,  and  Susan  the  tearful  and  widowed 
queen  and  mother,  and  Hugo  as  a  beefeater,  who  had  to  bawl 
at  the  top  of  his  voice :  "  Reine,  retirez-vous  !  "  when  the  queen's 
sobs  became  excessive,  and  indeed  in  Susan's  rendering  there 
was  nothing  wanting  in  the  way  of  sobs,  as  she  was  a  facile 
weeper,  and  Margaret  used  to  call  her  "  Madame  la  Pluie." 
Indeed  there  was  a  legend  in  the  schoolroom  that  the  decline 
of  Louis  xiv.,  King  of  France,  moved  her  to  tears,  and  being 
asked  why  she  was  crying,  she  sobbed  out  the  words  :  "  la 
vieillesse  du  grand  Woi." 

As  far  back  as  I  remember  we  used  to  act  plays  in  French. 
The  first  one  performed  in  the  back  drawing-room  in  Charles 
Street  was  called  Comme  on  fait  son  lit  on  se  couche,  and  I  played 
some  part  in  it  which  I  afterwards  almost  regretted,  as  whenever 
a  visitor  came  to  luncheon  I  was  asked  to  say  a  particular 
phrase  out  of  it,  and  generally  refused.  This  was  not  either 
from  obstinacy  or  naughtiness  ;  it  was  simply  to  spare  my 
mother  humiliation.  I  was  sure  grown-up  people  could  not 
help  thinking  the  performance  inadequate  and  trifling.  I  was 
simply  covered  with  prospective  shame  and  wished  to  spare 
them  the  same  feeling.  One  day,  when  a  Frenchman,  Monsieur 
de  Jaucourt,  came  to  luncheon,  I  refused  to  say  the  sentence 
in  question,  in  spite  of  the  most  tempting  bribes,  simply  for 
that  reason.  I  was  hot  with  shame  at  thinking  what  Monsieur 
de  Jaucourt — he  a  Frenchman,  too — would  think  of  something 
so  inadequate.  And  this  shows  how  impossible  it  is  for  grown- 
up people  to  put  themselves  in  children's  shoes  and  to  divine 
their  motives.  If  only  children  knew,  it  didn't  matter  what 
they  said  ! 

Another  dramatic   performance  was   a  scene   from   Victoi 
Hugo's  drama,  Angclo,  in  which  Margaret,  dressed  in  a  crimson 

1  "  Libre,  je  rends  visite  a  la   terre,  aux  etoiles  ; 
Sur  la  Tamise  en  feu  je  suis  ces  blanches  voiles." 

Les  Enfants  d't-'.douard.  Act  111    Sc  L 

CASIMIR    DEI.AVIGNh. 


22  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

velvet  cloak  bordered  with  gold  braid,  declaimed  a  speech  of 
Angelo  Podesta  of  Padua,  about  the  Council  of  Ten  at  Venice, 
while  Susan,  dressed  in  pink  satin  and  lace,  sat  silent  and 
attentive,  looking  meek  in  the  part  of  the  Venetian  courtesan. 

All  this  happened  during  early  years  in  London. 

Mademoiselle  Ida  used  to  enliven  lessons  with  news  from 
the  outside  world,  discussions  of  books  and  concerts,  and  especi- 
ally of  other  artists.  One  day  when  I  was  sitting  at  my  slate 
with  Mrs.  Christie,  she  was  discussing  English  spelling,  and  say- 
ing how  difficult  it  was.  Mrs.  Christie  rashly  said  that  I  could 
spell  very  well,  upon  which  Mademoiselle  Ida  said  to  me,  "  You 
would  spell  '  which'  double  u  i  c  h,  wouldn't  you  ?  "  And  I, 
anxious  to  oblige,  said,  "  Yes."     This  was  a  bitter  humiliation. 

Besides  music  lessons  we  had  drawing  lessons,  first  from  a 
Miss  Van  Sturmer.  Later  we  had  lessons  from  Mr.  Nathaniel 
Green,  a  water-colourist,  who  taught  us  perspective.  One  year 
I  drew  the  schoolroom  clock,  which  Mr.  Jump  used  to  come  to 
wind  once  a  week,  as  a  present  for  my  mother  on  her  birthday, 
the  18th  of  June. 

Sometimes  I  shared  my  mother's  lesson  in  water-colours. 
Mr.  Green  used  to  say  he  liked  my  washes,  as  they  were  warm. 
He  used  to  put  his  brush  in  his  mouth,  which  I  considered 
dangerous,  and  he  sometimes  used  a  colour  called  Antwerp 
blue,  which  I  thought  was  a  pity,  as  it  was  supposed  to  fade. 
I  was  passionately  fond  of  drawing,  and  drew  both  indoors  and 
out  of  doors  on  every  possible  opportunity,  and  constantly 
illustrated  various  episodes  in  our  life,  or  books  that  were 
being  read  out  at  the  time.  I  took  an  immense  interest  in  my 
mother's  painting,  especially  in  the  colours  :  Rubens  madder, 
cyanine,  aureoline,  green  oxide  of  chromium,  transparent — all 
seemed  to  be  magic  names.  The  draughtsman  of  the  family 
was  Elizabeth.  None  of  my  brothers  drew.  Elizabeth  used 
to  paint  a  bust  of  Clytie  in  oils,  and  sometimes  she  went  as  far 
as  life-size  portraits.  Besides  this,  she  was  an  excellent  cari- 
caturist, and  used  to  illustrate  the  main  episodes  of  our  family 
life  in  a  little  sketch-book. 

Lessons,  on  the  whole,  used  to  pass  off  peacefully.  I 
don't  think  we  were  ever  naughty  with  Mrs.  Christie,  although 
Elizabeth  and  Margaret  used  often  to  rock  with  laughter  at 
some  private  joke  of  their  own  during  their  lessons,  but  with 
Chene  we  were  often  naughty.     The  usual  punishment  was  to 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  23 

be  prive  de  pudding.  When  the  currant  and  raspberry  tart 
came  round  at  luncheon  we  used  to  refuse  it,  and  my  mother 
used  to  press  it  on  us,  not  knowing  that  we  had  been  privi. 
Sometimes,  too,  we  had  to  write  out  three  tenses  of  the  verb 
aimer,  and  on  one  occasion  I  refused  to  do  it.  It  was  a  Saturday 
afternoon  ;  there  was  a  treat  impending,  and  I  was  told  I  would 
not  be  allowed  to  go  unless  I  copied  out  the  tenses,  but  I  re- 
mained firm  throughout  luncheon.  Finally,  at  the  end  of 
luncheon  I  capitulated  in  a  flood  of  tears  and  accepted  the  loan 
of  my  mother's  gold  pencil-case  and  scribbled  J'aime,  tu  aimes, 
il  aime,  etc.,  on  a  piece  of  writing-paper. 

In  the  drawing-room  we  were  not  often  naughty,  but  we 
were  sometimes,  and  tried  the  grown-ups  at  moments  beyond 
endurance.  My  mother  said  that  she  had  had  to  whip  us  all 
except  Hugo.  I  was  whipped  three  times.  Before  the  opera- 
tion my  mother  always  took  off  her  rings. 

Upstairs,  Margaret  and  Elizabeth  used  sometimes  to  fight, 
and  Susan  would  join  in  the  fray,  inspired  by  the  impulse  of  the 
moment.  She  was  liable  to  these  sudden  impulses,  and  on  one 
occasion — she  was  very  small — when  she  was  looking  on  at  a 
review  of  volunteers,  when  the  guns  suddenly  fired,  she  stood 
up  in  the  carriage  and  boxed  everyone's  ears. 

Not  long  ago  we  found  an  old  mark-book  which  belonged 
to  this  epoch  of  schoolroom  life,  and  in  it  was  the  following 
entry  in  Cherie's  handwriting  :  "  Elizabeth  et  Marguerite  se 
sont  battues,  Suzanne  s'est  jet£e  sur  le  pauvre  petit  Maurice." 
Whenever  Margaret  saw  that  I  was  on  the  verge  of  tears  she 
used  to  say  that  I  made  a  special  face,  which  meant  I  was 
getting  ready  to  cry,  and  she  called  this  la  premiere  position  ; 
when  the  corners  of  the  mouth  went  down,  and  the  first 
snuffle  was  heard,  she  called  it  la  seconde  position ;  and  when 
tears  actually  came,  it  was  la  troisieme  position.  Nearly  always 
the  mention  of  la  premiere  position  averted  tears  altogether. 

On  Monday  evenings  in  London  my  mother  used  to  go 
regularly  to  the  Monday  Pops  at  St.  James's  Hall,  and  on  Satur- 
day afternoon  also.  Dinner  was  at  seven  on  Mondays,  and 
we  used  to  go  down  to  it,  and  watch  my  mother  cut  up  a  leg 
of  chicken  and  fill  it  with  mustard  and  pepper  and  cayenne 
pepper  to  make  a  devil  for  supper.  Margaret  was  sometimes 
taken  to  the  Monday  Pop,  as  she  was  supposed  to  like  it,  but 
the  others  were  seldom  taken,  in  case,  my  mother  used  to  say, 


24  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

"  You  say  when  you  are  grown  up  that  you  were  dragged  to 
concerts,  and  get  to  dislike  them."  The  result  was  a  feverish 
longing  to  go  to  the  Monday  Pop.  I  don't  remember  going  to 
the  Monday  Pop  until  I  was  grown  up,  but  I  know  that  I 
always  wanted  to  go.  I  was  taken  to  the  Saturday  Pop  some- 
times, and  the  first  one  I  went  to  was  on  8th  November  1879. 
I  was  five  years  old.     This  was  the  programme  : 

Quartet,  E  Flat        .......     Mendelssohn 

Mme  Norman  Neruda,  Ries,  Zerbini,  Piatti. 

Song  .  .  .    "  O  Swallow,  Swallow "     .  .     Piatti 

Mr.  Santley. 
Violoncello  obbligato,  Signor  Piatti. 

Sonata,  C  Sharp  Minor     .    "Moonlight"  .  .  .     Beethoven 

Mlle  Janotha. 

Sonata  in  F  Major  for  Pianoforte  and  Violin,  No.  9     Mozart 
Mlle  Janotha  and  Mme  Norman  Neruda. 

Song  ..."  The  Erl  King "    .  .  .     Schubert 

Mr.  Santley. 

Trio  in  C  Major         .......     Haydn 

Mlle  Janotha,  Mme  Norman  Neruda,  Signor  Piatti. 

Every  winter  we  were  taken  to  the  pantomime  by  Lord 
Antrim,  and  the  pantomimes  I  remember  seeing  were  Mother 
Goose,  Robinson  Crusoe,  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  Aladdin,  and 
Cinderella,  in  which  the  funny  parts  were  played  by  Herbert 
Campbell  and  Harry  Nicholls,  and  the  Princess  sometimes  by  the 
incomparably  graceful  dancer,  Kate  Vaughan. 

I  also  remember  the  first  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  operas. 
Pinafore  I  was  too  young  for ;  but  I  saw  the  Children's  Pina- 
fore, wh;ch  was  played  by  children.  Patience  and  Iolanthe  and 
Princess  Ida  I  saw  when  they  were  first  produced  at  the  Savoy. 

Irving  and  Ellen  Terry  we  never  saw  till  I  went  to  school, 
as  Irving's  acting  in  Shakespeare  made  my  father  angry.  When 
he  saw  him  play  Romeo,  he  was  heard  to  mutter  the  whole  time : 
"  Remove  that  man  from  the  stage." 

Then  there  were  children's  parties.  Strangely  enough,  I 
only  remember  one  of  these,  so  I  don't  expect  I  enjoyed  them. 
But  I  remember  a  children's  garden  party  at  Marlborough 
House,  and  the  exquisite  beauty,  the  grace,  and  the  fairy- 
tale-like welcome  of  the  Princess  of  Wales. 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  25 

Two  of  the  great  days  for  the  children  in  London  were 
Valentine's  Day,  on  the  eve  of  which  we  each  of  us  sent  the 
whole  of  the  rest  of  the  family  Valentines,  cushioned  and 
scented  Valentines  with  silken  fringes  ;  and  the  1st  of  April, 
when  Susan  was  always  made  an  April  fool,  the  best  one  being 
one  of  CheYie's,  who  sent  her  to  look  in  the  schoolroom  for 
Les  Memoircs  de  Jonas  dans  la  baleine.  She  searched  con- 
scientiously, but  in  vain,  for  this  interesting  book. 

On  one  occasion,  on  the  Prince  of  Wales'  wedding-day,  in 
March,  the  whole  family  were  invited  to  a  children's  ball  at 
Marlborough  House.  The  girls'  frocks  were  a  subject  of  daily 
discussion  for  weeks  beforehand,  and  other  governesses  used  to 
come  and  discuss  the  matter.  They  were  white  frocks,  and 
when  they  were  ready  they  were  found  to  be  a  failure,  for  some 
reason,  and  they  had  to  be  made  all  over  again  at  another 
dressmaker's,  called  Mrs.  Mason.  It  was  on  this  occasion  that 
CheYie  made  a  memorable  utterance  and  said  :  "  Les  pointes  de 
Madame  Mason  sont  incomparables,"  as  Elizabeth  had  for  the 
first  time  risen  to  the  dignity  of  a  pointe  (the  end  of  the  pointed 
"  bodies  "  of  the  fashions  of  that  day).  It  was  doubtful  whether 
the  new  frocks  would  be  ready  in  time.  There  was  a  momentous 
discussion  as  to  whether  they  were  to  wear  black  stockings  or 
not.  Finally  the  frocks  arrived,  and  we  were  dressed  and  were 
all  marshalled  downstairs  ready  to  start.  My  father  in  knee- 
breeches  and  myself  in  a  black  velvet  suit,  black  velvet  breeches, 
and  a  white  waistcoat.  I  was  told  to  be  careful  to  remember 
to  kiss  the  Princess  of  Wales'  hand. 

I  can  just  remember  the  ballroom,  but  none  of  the  grown-up 
people — nothing,  in  fact,  except  a  vague  crowd  of  tulle  skirts. 

One  night  there  was  a  ball,  or  rather  a  small  dance,  in  Charles 
Street,  and  I  was  allowed  to  come  down  after  going  to  bed  all 
day.     People  shook  their  heads  over  this,  and  said  I  was  being 
spoilt,  to  Cherie,  but  Cherie  said:  "  Cet  enfant  n'est  pas  gate 
mais  il  se  fait  gater." 

The  dance  led  off  with  a  quadrille,  in  which  I  and  my  father 
both  took  part.  After  having  carefully  learnt  the  pas  chasse 
at  dancing  lessons,  I  was  rather  shocked  to  find  this  elegant 
glide  was  not  observed  by  the  quadrille  dancers. 

All  this  was  the  delightful  epoch  of  the  'eighties,  when  the 
shop  windows  were  full  of  photographs  of  the  professional 
beauties,  and  bands  played  tunes  from  the  new  Gilbert  and 


26  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Sullivan  in  the  early  morning  in  the  streets,  and  people  rode 
in  Rotten  Row  in  the  evening,  and  CheYie  used  to  rush  us 
across  the  road  to  get  a  glimpse  of  Mrs.  Langtry  or  the 
Princess  of  Wales. 

Dancing  lessons  played  an  important  part  in  our  lives.  Our 
first  dancing  instructor  was  the  famous  ex-ballerina,  Madame 
Taglioni,  a  graceful  old  lady  with  grey  curls,  who  held  a  class  at 
Lady  Granville's  house  in  Carlton  House  Terrace.  It  was  there 
I  had  my  first  dancing  lesson  and  learnt  the  Tarantelle,  a  dance 
with  a  tambourine,  which  I  have  always  found  effective,  if  not 
useful,  in  later  life.  Then  Madame  Taglioni's  class  came  to  an 
end,  and  there  was  a  class  at  Lady  Ashburton's  at  Bath  House, 
which  was  suddenly  put  a  stop  to  owing  to  the  rough  and  wild 
behaviour  of  the  boys,  myself  among  them.  Finally  we  had  a 
class  in  our  own  house,  supervised  by  a  strict  lady  in  black  silk, 
who  taught  us  the  pas  chasse,  the  five  positions,  the  valse,  the 
polka,  and  the  Lancers. 

Another  event  was  Mrs.  Christie's  lottery,  which  was  held 
once  a  year  at  her  house  at  Kentish  Town.  All  her  pupils 
came,  and  everyone  won  a  prize  in  the  lottery.  One  year  I  won 
a  stuffed  duck.  After  tea  we  acted  charades.  On  the  way  back 
we  used  to  pass  several  railway  bridges,  and  Cherie,  producing  a 
gold  pencil,  used  to  say :  "  Par  la  vertu  de  ma  petite  baguette," 
she  would  make  a  train  pass.  It  was  perhaps  a  rash  boast,  but 
it  was  always  successful. 

We  used  to  drive  to  Mrs.  Christie's  in  a  coach,  an  enormous 
carriage  driven  by  Maisy,  the  coachman,  who  wore  a  white  wig. 
It  was  only  used  when  the  whole  family  had  to  be  transported 
somewhere. 

Another  incident  of  London  life  was  Mademoiselle  Ida's 
pupils'  concert,  which  happened  in  the  summer.  I  performed 
twice  at  it,  I  think,  but  never  a  solo.  A  duet  with  Mademoiselle 
Ida  playing  the  bass,  and  whispering  :  "  Gare  au  diese,  gare  au 
bemol,"  in  my  ear.  What  we  enjoyed  most  about  this  was 
waiting  in  what  was  called  the  artists'  room,  and  drinking 
raspberry  vinegar. 

But  the  crowning  bliss  of  London  life  was  Hamilton  Gardens, 
where  we  used  to  meet  other  children  and  play  flags  in  the 
summer  evenings. 

This  was  the  scene  of  wild  enjoyment,  not  untinged  with 
romance,  for  there  the  future  beauties  of  England  were  all  at 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  27 

play  in  their  lovely  teens.  We  were  given  tickets  for  con- 
certs at  the  Albert  Hall  and  elsewhere  in  the  afternoon,  but  I 
remember  that  often  when  Hugo  and  I  were  given  the  choice 
of  going  to  a  concert  or  playing  in  the  nursery,  we  sometimes 
chose  to  play.  But  I  do  remember  hearing  Patti  sing  "  Coming 
thro'  the  Rye"  at  the  Guildhall,  and  Albani  and  Santley  on 
several  occasions. 

But  what  we  enjoyed  most  of  all  was  finding  some  broken  and 
derelict  toy,  and  inventing  a  special  game  for  it.  Once  in  a  cup- 
board in  the  back  drawing-room  I  came  across  some  old  toys 
which  had  belonged  to  John  and  Cecil,  and  must  have  been  there 
for  years.  Among  other  things  there  was  an  engine  in  perfectly 
good  repair,  with  a  little  cone  like  the  end  of  a  cigar  which  you 
put  inside  the  engine  under  the  funnel.  You  then  lit  it  and  smoke 
came  out,  and  the  engine  moved  automatically.  This  seemed 
too  miraculous  for  inquiry,  and  I  still  wonder  how  and  why  it 
happened.  Then  the  toy  was  unaccountably  lost,  and  I  never 
discovered  the  secret  of  this  mysterious  and  wonderful  engine. 

During  all  this  time  there  were  two  worlds  of  which  one 
gradually  became  conscious  :  the  inside  world  and  the  outside 
world.  The  centre  of  the  inside  world,  like  the  sun  to  the  solar 
system,  was,  of  course,  our  father  and  mother  (Papa  and 
Mamma),  the  dispenser  of  everything,  the  source  of  all  enjoy- 
ment, and  the  final  court  of  appeal,  recourse  to  which  was  often 
threatened  in  disputes. 

Next  came  Che^rie,  then  my  mother's  maid,  Dimmock,  then 
Sheppy,  the  housekeeper,  who  had  white  grapes,  cake,  and  other 
treats  in  the  housekeeper's  room.  She  was  a  fervent  Salva- 
tionist and  wore  a  Salvationist  bonnet,  and  when  my  father 
got  violent  and  shouted  out  loud  ejaculations,  she  used  to  coo 
softly  in  a  deprecating  tone. 

Then  there  was  Monsieur  Butat,  the  cook,  who  used  to  appear 
in  white  after  breakfast  when  my  father  ordered  dinner  ;  Deao  in , 
his  servant,  was  the  source  of  all  worldly  wisdom  and  experi- 
ence, and  recommended  brown  billycock  hats  in  preference  to 
black  ones,  because  they  did  not  fade  in  the  sea  air;  Harriet, 
the  housemaid,  who  used  to  bring  a  cup  of  tea  in  the  early 
morning  to  my  mother's  bedroom,  and  Frank  the  footman. 
I  can't  remember  a  butler  in  London,  but  I  suppose  there 
one;  but  if  it  was  the  same  one  we  had  in  the  country,  it  was 
Mr.  Watson. 


28  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Dimmock,  or  D.,  as  we  used  to  call  her,  played  a  great  part 
in  my  early  life,  because  when  I  came  up  to  London  or  went 
down  to  the  country  alone  with  my  father  and  mother  she  used 
to  have  sole  charge  of  me,  and  I  slept  in  her  room.  One  day, 
during  one  of  these  autumnal  visits  to  London,  I  was  given  an 
umbrella  with  a  skeleton's  head  on  it.  This  came  back  in 
dreams  to  me  with  terrific  effect,  and  for  several  nights  running 
I  ran  down  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  the  house  in  terror. 
The  umbrella  was  taken  away.  I  used  to  love  these  visits  to 
London  when  half  the  house  was  shut  up,  and  there  was  no 
one  there  except  my  father  and  mother  and  D.,  and  we  used  to 
live  in  the  library  downstairs.  There  used  to  be  long  and  almost 
daily  expeditions  to  shops  because  Christmas  was  coming,  as 
D.  used  to  chant  to  me  every  morning,  and  the  Christmas-tree 
shopping  had  to  be  done.  D.  and  I  used  to  buy  all  the  materials 
for  the  Christmas-tree — the  candles,  the  glass  balls,  and  the  fairy 
to  stand  at  the  top  of  it — in  a  shop  in  the  Edgware  Road  called 
Eagle.  I  used  to  have  dinner  in  the  housekeeper's  room  with 
Sheppy,  and  spent  most  of  my  time  in  D.'s  working-room.  One 
day  she  gave  me  a  large  piece  of  red  plush,  and  I  had  something 
sewn  round  it,  and  called  it  Red  Conscience.  Never  did  a  present 
make  me  more  happy  ;  I  treated  it  as  something  half  sacred,  like 
a  Mussulman's  mat. 

On  one  occasion  D.  and  I  went  to  a  matinee  at  St.  James's 
Theatre  to  see  A  Scrap  of  Paper,  played  by  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Kendal.  This  year  I  read  the  play  (it  was  translated  from 
Sardou's  Pattes  de  Mouche)  for  the  first  time,  and  I  found  I 
could  recollect  every  scene  of  the  play,  and  Mrs.  Kendal's 
expression  and  intonation. 

Another  time  Madame  Neruda,  who  was  a  great  friend  of  my 
mother's,  whom  we  saw  constantly,  gave  me  two  tickets  for  a 
ballad  concert  at  which  she  was  playing.  The  policeman  was 
told  to  take  me  into  the  artists'  room  during  the  interval. 
D.  was  to  take  me,  but  for  some  reason  she  thought  the  concert 
was  in  the  evening,  and  it  turned  out  to  be  in  the  afternoon  ; 
so  as  a  compensation  my  father  sent  us  to  an  operetta  called 
Polka,  in  which  Miss  Violet  Cameron  sang.  I  enjoyed  it  more 
than  any  concert.  The  next  day  Madame  Neruda  came  to 
luncheon  and  heard  all  about  the  misadventure.  "  And  did 
you  enjoy  your  operetta  ?  "  she  asked.  "  Yes,"  I  said,  with 
enthusiasm.     "  Say,  not  as  much  as  you  would  have  enjoyed 


THE  NURSERY  AND  THE  SCHOOLROOM  29 

the  ballad  concert,"  said  my  mother.  But  I  didn't  feel  so  sure 
about  that. 

I  used  to  do  lessons  with  Mrs.  Christie,  and  have  music 
lessons  from  Mademoiselle  Ida,  and  in  the  afternoon  I  often 
used  to  go  out  shopping  in  the  carriage  with  my  mother,  or 
for  a  walk  with  D.  But  I  will  tell  more  about  her  later  when 
I  describe  Membland. 

The  girls  had  a  maid  who  looked  after  them  called  Rawlin- 
son,  and  she  and  the  nursery  made  up  the  rest  of  the  inside 
world  in  London. 

In  the  outside  world  the  first  person  of  importance  I  re- 
member was  Grandmamma,  my  mother's  mother,  Lady  Eliza- 
beth Bulteel,  who  used  to  paint  exquisite  pictures  for  the 
children  like  the  pictures  on  china,  and  play  songs  for  us  on  the 
pianoforte.  She  often  came  to  luncheon,  and  used  to  bring  toys 
to  be  raffled  for,  and  make  us,  at  the  end  of  luncheon,  sing  a  song 

which  ran  : 

"  A  pie  sat  on  a  pear  tree, 
And  once  so  merrily  hopped  she, 
And  twice  so  merrily  hopped  she. 
Three  times  so  merrily  hopped  she," 

Each  singer  held  a  glass  in  his  hand.     When  the  song  had 

got  thus  far,  everyone  drained   their   glass,  and   the   person 

who  finished  first  had  to  say  the  last  line  of  the  verse,  which 

was  : 

"  Ya-he,  ya-ho,  ya-ho." 

And  the  person  who  said  it  first,  won. 

Everything  about  Grandmamma  was  soft  and  exquisite : 
her  touch  on  the  piano  and  her  delicate  manipulation  of 
the  painting-brush.  She  lived  in  Green  Street,  a  house  I  re- 
member as  the  perfection  of  comfort  and  cultivated  dignity. 
There  were  amusing  drawing-tables  with  tiles,  pencils,  painting- 
brushes  ;  chintz  chairs  and  books  and  music  ;  a  smell  of  pot- 
pourri and  lavender  water;  miniatures  in  glass  tables,  pretty 
china,  and  finished  water-colours. 

In  November  1880 — this  is  one  of  the  few  dates  I  can  place — 
we  were  in  London,  my  father  and  mother  and  myself,  and 
Grandmamma  was  not  well.  She  must  have  been  over  eighty,  I 
think.  Every  day  I  used  to  go  to  Green  Street  with  my  mother 
and  spend  the  whole  morning  illuminating  a  text.  1  v. .is 
told  Grandmamma  was  very  ill,  and  had  to  take  the  nastitM 


30  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

medicines,  and  was  being  so  good  about  it.  I  was  sometimes 
taken  in  to  see  her.  One  day  I  finished  the  text,  and  it  was 
given  to  Grandmamma.  That  evening  when  I  was  having  my 
tea,  my  father  and  mother  came  into  the  dining-room  and  told 
me  Grandmamma  was  dead.  The  text  I  had  finished  was 
buried  with  her. 

The  next  day  at  luncheon  I  asked  my  mother  to  sing  "  A 
pie  sat  on  a  pear  tree,"  as  usual.  It  was  the  daily  ritual  of 
luncheon.  She  said  she  couldn't  do  "  Hopped  she,"  as  we  called 
it,  any  longer  now  that  Grandmamma  was  not  there. 

Another  thing  Grandmamma  had  always  done  at  luncheon 
was  to  break  a  thin  water  biscuit  into  two  halves,  so  that  one 
half  looked  like  a  crescent  moon ;  and  I  said  to  my  mother, 
"  We  shan't  be  able  to  break  biscuits  like  that  any  more." 


CHAPTER    III 
MEMBLAND 

TO  mention  any  of  the  other  people  of  the  outside  world 
at  once  brings  me  to  Membland,  because  the  outside 
world  was  intimately  connected  with  that  place. 
Membland  was  a  large,  square,  Jacobean  house,  white  brick, 
green  shutters  and  ivy,  with  some  modern  gabled  rough-cast 
additions  and  a  tower,  about  twelve  miles  from  Plymouth  and 
ten  miles  from  the  station  Ivy  Bridge. 

On  the  north  side  of  the  house  there  was  a  gravel  yard,  on 
the  south  side  a  long,  sweeping,  sloping  lawn,  then  a  ha-ha,  a 
field  beyond  this  and  rookery  which  was  called  the  Grove. 

When  you  went  through  the  front  hall  you  came  into  a  large 
billiard-room  in  which  there  was  a  staircase  leading  to  a  gallery 
going  round  the  room  and  to  the  bedrooms.  The  billiard-room 
was  high  and  there  were  no  rooms  over  the  billiard-room  proper 
— but  beyond  the  billiard-table  the  room  extended  into  a  lower 
section,  culminating  in  a  semicircle  of  windows  in  which  there 
was  a  large  double  writing-table. 

Later,  under  the  staircase,  there  was  an  organ,  and  the  pipes 
of  the  great  organ  were  on  the  wall. 

There  was  a  drawing-room  full  of  chintz  chairs,  books,  pot- 
pourri, a  grand  pianoforte,  and  two  writing-tables  ;  a  dining- 
room  looking  south  ;  a  floor  of  guests'  rooms  ;  a  bachelors' 
passage  in  the  wing ;  a  schoolroom  on  the  ground  floor  looking 
north,  with  a  little  dark  room  full  of  rubbish  next  to  it,  which 
was  called  the  Cabinet  Noir,  and  where  we  were  sent  when  we 
were  naughty  ;  and  a  nursery  floor  over  the  guests'  rooms. 

From  the  northern  side  of  the  house  you  could  see  the  hills 
of  Dartmoor.  In  the  west  there  was  a  mass  of  tall  trees,  Scotch 
firs,  stone-pines,  and  ashes. 

There  was  a  large  kitchen  garden  at  some  distance  from 
the  house  on  a  hill  and  enclosed  by  walls. 


32  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Our  routine  of  life  was  much  the  same  as  it  was  in  London, 
except  that  the  children  had  breakfast  in  the  schoolroom  at 
nine,  as  the  grown-ups  did  not  have  breakfast  till  later. 

Then  came  lessons,  a  walk,  or  play  in  the  garden,  further 
lessons,  luncheon  at  two,  a  walk  or  an  expedition,  lessons  from 
five  till  six,  and  then  tea  and  games  or  reading  aloud  afterwards. 
One  of  the  chief  items  of  lessons  was  the  Dictee,  in  which  we  all 
took  part,  and  even  Everard  from  Eton  used  to  come  and  join 
in  this  sometimes. 

Elizabeth  won  a  kind  of  inglorious  glory  one  day  by  making 
thirteen  mistakes  in  her  dictee,  which  was  the  record — a  record 
never  beaten  by  any  one  of  us  before  or  since ;  and  the  words 
treize  f antes  used  often  to  be  hurled  at  her  head  in  moments  of 
stress. 

After  tea  Cherie  used  to  read  out  books  to  the  girls,  and  I 
was  allowed  to  listen,  although  I  was  supposed  to  be  too  young 
to  understand,  and  indeed  I  was.  Nevertheless,  I  found  the 
experience  thrilling ;  and  there  are  many  book  incidents  which 
have  remained  for  ever  in  my  mind,  absorbed  during  these 
readings,  although  I  cannot  always  place  them.  I  recollect  a 
wonderful  book  called  L'Homme  de  Neige,  and  many  passages 
from  Alexandre  Dumas. 

Sometimes  Cherie  would  read  out  to  me,  especially  stories 
from  the  Cabinet  des  Fees,  or  better  still,  tell  stories  of  her  own 
invention.  There  was  one  story  in  which  many  animals  took 
part,  and  one  of  the  characters  was  a  partridge  who  used  to  go 
out  just  before  the  shooting  season  with  a  telescope  under  his 
wing  to  see  whether  things  were  safe.  CheYie  always  used  to 
say  this  was  the  creation  she  was  proudest  of.  Another  story 
was  called  Le  Prince  Muguet  et  Princesse  Myosotis,  which  my 
mother  had  printed.  I  wrote  a  different  story  on  the  same 
theme  and  inspired  by  CheYie's  story  when  I  grew  up.  But  I 
enjoyed  CheYie's  recollections  of  her  childhood  as  much  as  her 
stories,  and  I  could  listen  for  ever  to  the  tales  of  her  grand-mhre 
severe  who  made  her  pick  thorny  juniper  to  make  gin,  or  the  story 
of  a  lady  who  had  only  one  gown,  a  yellow  one,  and  who  every 
day  used  to  ask  her  maid  what  the  weather  was  like,  and  if  the 
maid  said  it  was  fine,  she  would  say,  "  Eh  bien,  je  mettrai  ma 
robe  jaune,"  and  if  it  was  rainy  she  would  likewise  say,  "  Je 
mettrai  ma  robe  jaune."  Poor  CheYie  used  to  be  made  to  repeat 
this  story  and  others  like  it  in  season  and  out  of  season. 


MEM  BLAND  33 

She  would  describe  Paris  until  I  felt  I  knew  every  street, 
and  landscapes  in  Normandy  and  other  parts  of  France.  The 
dream  of  my  life  was  to  go  to  Paris  and  see  the  Boulevards 
and  the  Invalides  and  the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  and  above  all,  the 
Champs  Elysees. 

CheYie  had  also  a  repertory  of  French  songs  which  1  •  u  «'d 
to  teach  us.    One  was  the  melancholy  story  of  a  little  cabin-boy : 

"  Je  ne  suis  qu'un  petit  mousse 

A  bord  d'un  vaisseau  royal, 
Je  vais  partout  ou  Ie  vent  me  pousse, 

Nord  ou  midi  cela  m'est  egale. 
Car  d'une  mere  et  d'un  pere 

Je  n'ai  jamais  connu  l'amour." 

Another  one,  less  pathetic  but  more  sentimental,  was  : 

"  Pourquoi  tous  les  jours,  Madeleine, 
Vas-tu  au  bord  du  ruisseau  ? 
Ce  n'est  pas,  car  je  l'espere. 

Pour  te  regarder  dans  l'eau, 
'  Mais  si,'  repond   Madeleine, 

Baissant  ses  beaux  yeux  d'ebene. 
Je  n'y  vais  pour  autre  raison." 

I  forget  the  rest,  but  it  said  that  she  looked  into  the  stream 
to  see  whether  it  was  true,  as  people  said,  that  she  was  beautiful 
— "  pour  voir  si  gent  ne  ment  pas  " — and  came  back  satisfied 
that  it  was  true. 

But  best  of  all  I  liked  the  ballad  : 

"  En  revenant  des  noces  j'etais  si  fatiguee 

Au  bord  d'un  ruisseau  je  me  suis  reposee, 
L'eau  etait  si  claire  que  je  me  suis  baignee, 

Avec  une  feuille  de  chene  je  mc  suis  essay) 
Sur  la  plus  haute  branche  un  rossignol  chantait, 

Chante,  beau  rossignol,  si  tu  as  le  coeur  gai, 
Pour  un  bouton  de  rose  mon  ami  s'est  fach6, 

Je  voudrais.  que  la  rose  fut  encore  au  rosier," 

or  words  to  that  effect , 

Besides  these  she  taught  us  all  the  French  singing  games  : 
"  Savez-vous  planter  les  choux  ?  "  "  Sur  le  pont  d 'Avignon,'' 
and  "  Qu'est  qui  passe  ici  si  tard,  Compagnons  de  la  Mar- 
jolaine  ?  "  We  used  to  sing  and  dance  these  up  and  down  the 
passage  outside  the  schoolroom  after  tea. 

Round  about  Membland  were  several  nests  of  relations, 
miles  off  was  my  mother's  old  home  Flete,  where  the  Mildmays 
lived.     Uncle  Bingham  Mildmay  married  my  mother'       iter, 


34  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Aunt  Georgie,  and  bought  Flete  ;  the  house,  which  was  old,  was 
said  to  be  falling  to  pieces,  so  it  was  rebuilt,  more  or  less  on  the 
old  lines,  with  some  of  the  old  structure  left  intact. 

At  Pamflete,  three  miles  off,  lived  my  mother's  brother, 
Uncle  Johnny  Bulteel,  with  his  wife,  Aunt  Effie,  and  thirteen 
children. 

And  in  the  village  of  Yealmpton,  three  miles  off,  also  lived 
my  great -aunt  Jane  who  had  a  sister  called  Aunt  Sister,  who, 
whenever  she  heard  carriage  wheels  in  the  drive,  used  to  get 
under  the  bed,  such  was  her  disinclination  to  receive  guests.  I 
cannot  remember  Aunt  Sister,  but  I  remember  Aunt  Jane  and 
Uncle  Willie  Harris,  who  was  either  her  brother  or  her  husband. 
He  had  been  present  at  the  battle  of  Waterloo  as  a  drummer- 
boy  at  the  age  of  fifteen.  But  Aunt  Sister's  characteristics  had 
descended  to  other  members  of  the  family,  and  my  mother  used 
to  say  that  when  she  and  her  sister  were  girls  my  Aunt  Georgie 
had  offered  her  a  pound  if  she  would  receive  some  guests  instead 
of  herself. 

On  Sundays  we  used  to  go  to  church  at  a  little  church  in 
Noss  Mayo  until  my  father  built  a  new  church,  which  is  there 
now. 

The  service  was  long,  beginning  at  eleven  and  lasting  till 
almost  one.  There  was  morning  prayer,  the  Litany,  the  Ante- 
Communion  service,  and  a  long  sermon  preached  by  the  rector, 
a  charming  old  man  called  Mr.  Roe,  who  was  not,  I  fear,  a 
compelling  preacher. 

When  we  went  to  church  I  was  given  a  picture-book  when 
I  was  small  to  read  during  the  sermon,  a  book  with  sacred 
pictures  in  colours.  I  was  terribly  ashamed  of  this.  I  would 
sooner  have  died  than  be  seen  in  the  pew  with  this  book.  It  was 
a  large  picture-book.  So  I  used  every  Sunday  to  lose  or  hide  it 
just  before  the  service,  and  find  it  again  afterwards.  On  Sunday 
evenings  we  used  sometimes  to  sing  hymns  in  the  schoolroom. 
The  words  of  the  hymns  were  a  great  puzzle.  For  instance,  in 
the  hymn,  "  Thy  will  be  done,"  the  following  verse  occurs — I 
punctuate  it  as  I  understood  it,  reading  it,  that  is  to  say, 
according  to  the  tune — 

"  Renew  my  will  from  day  to  day. 
Blend  it  with  Thine,  and  take  away. 
All  that  now  makes  it  hard  to  say 
Thy  will  be  done." 


MEMBLAND  35 

I  thought  the  blending  and  the  subsequent  taking  away  of 
what  was  blent  was  a  kind  of  trial  of  faith. 

After  tea,  instead  of  being  read  to,  we  used  sometimes  to  play 
a  delightful  round  game  with  counters,  called  Le  Nain  Jaune, 

Any  number  of  people  could  play  at  it,  and  I  especially 
remember  Susan  triumphantly  playing  the  winning  card  and 
saying  : 

"  Le  bon  Valet,  la  bonne  Dame,  le  bon  Woi.  Je  wecom- 
mence." 

In  September  or  October,  Cherie  would  go  for  her  holidays. 
I  cannot  remember  if  she  went  every  year,  but  we  had  no  one 
instead  of  her,  and  she  left  behind  her  a  series  of  holiday  tasks. 

During  one  of  her  absences  my  Aunt  M'aimee,  another 
sister  of  my  mother's,  came  to  stay  with  us.  Aunt  M'aimee 
was  married  to  Uncle  Henry  Ponsonby,  the  Queen's  Private 
Secretary.  He  came,  too,  and  with  them  their  daughter  Betty. 
Betty  had  a  craze  at  that  time  for  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  gave  a 
fine  imitation  of  her  as  Dona  Sol  in  the  last  act  of  Hcrnani. 
It  was  decided  we  should  act  this  whole  scene,  with  Margaret 
as  Hcrnani  and  Aunt  M'aimee  reading  the  part  of  Ruy  Gomez, 
who  appears  in  a  domino  and  mask. 

Never  had  I  experienced  anything  more  thrilling.  I  used  to 
lie  on  the  floor  during  the  rehearsals,  and  soon  I  knew  the  whole 
act  by  heart.  I  thought  Betty  the  greatest  genius  that  ever 
lived. 

When  Cherie  came  back  she  was  rather  surprised  and  not 
altogether  pleased  to  find  I  knew  the  whole  of  the  last  act  of 
Hcrnani  by  heart.  She  thought  this  a  little  too  exciting  and 
grown-up  for  me,  and  even  for  Margaret,  but  none  the  less 
she  let  me  perform  the  part  of  Dona  Sol  one  evening  after  tea  in 
my  mother's  bedroom,  dressed  in  a  white  frock,  with  Susan  in  a 
riding-habit  playing  the  sinister  figure  of  Ruy  Gomez.  I  can 
see  Cherie  now,  sitting  behind  a  screen,  book  in  hand  to  prompt 
me,  and  shaking  with  laughter  as  I  piped  out  in  a  tremulous  and 
lisping  treble  the  passionate  words  : 

"  II  vaudrait  mieuxzaller  (which  I  made  all  one  word)  au  tigrc  memo 
Arracher  sea  petita  qu'a  moi  celui  que  j'aiine." 

Cheric's  return  from  her  holidays  was  one  of  the  most 
exciting  of  events,  for  she  would  bring  back  with  her  a  mass  of 
toys  from  Giroux  and  the  Paradis  des  EnfatUs,  and  a  flood  of 


36  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

stories  about  the  people  and  places  and  plays  she  had  seen,  and 
the  food  she  had  eaten. 

One  year  she  brought  me  back  a  theatre  of  puppets.  It 
was  called  Theatre  francais.  It  had  a  white  proscenium,  three 
scenes  and  an  interior,  a  Moorish  garden  by  moonlight,  and  a 
forest,  and  a  quantity  of  small  puppets  suspended  by  stiff  wires 
and  dressed  in  silk  and  satin.  There  was  a  harlequin,  a  colum- 
bine, a  king,  a  queen,  many  princesses,  a  villain  scowling  beneath 
black  eyebrows,  an  executioner  with  a  mask,  peasants,  pastry- 
cooks, and  soldiers  with  halberds,  who  would  have  done  honour 
to  the  Papal  Guard  at  the  Vatican,  and  some  heavily  moustached 
gendarmes.  This  theatre  was  a  source  of  ecstasy,  and  innumer- 
able dramas  used  to  be  performed  in  it.  Cherie  used  also  to 
bring  back  some  delicious  cakes  called  nonnettes,  a  kind  of  ginger- 
bread with  icing  on  the  top,  rolled  up  in  a  long  paper  cylinder. 

She  also  brought  baskets  of  bonbons  from  Boissier,  the  kind 
of  basket  which  had  several  floors  of  different  kinds  of  bonbons, 
fondants  on  the  top  in  their  white  frills,  then  caramels,  then 
chocolates,  then  fruits  confits.  All  these  things  confirmed  one's 
idea  that  there  could  be  no  place  like  Paris. 

In  1878,  when  I  was  four  years  old,  another  brother  was  born, 
Rupert,  in  August,  but  he  died  in  October  of  the  same  year. 
He  was  buried  in  Revelstoke  Church,  a  church  not  used  any 
more,  and  then  in  ruins  except  for  one  aisle,  which  was  roofed 
in,  and  provided  with  pews.  It  nestled  by  the  seashore,  right 
down  on  the  rocks,  grey  and  covered  with  ivy,  and  surrounded 
by  quaint  tombstones  that  seemed  to  have  been  scattered 
haphazard  in  the  thick  grass  and  the  nettles. 

I  tliink  it  was  about  the  same  time  that  one  evening  I  was 
playing  in  my  godmother's  room,  that  I  fell  into  the  fire,  and 
my  little  white  frock  was  ablaze  and  my  back  badly  burnt. 
I  remember  being  taken  up  to  the  nursery  and  having  my 
back  rubbed  with  potatoes,  and  thinking  that  part,  and  the 
excitement  and  sympathy  shown,  and  the  interest  created, 
great  fun. 

All  this  was  before  Hugo  was  in  the  schoolroom,  but  in  all  my 
sharper  memories  of  Membland  days  he  plays  a  prominent 
part.  We,  of  course,  shared  the  night  nursery,  and  we  soon 
invented  games  together,  some  of  which  were  distracting,  not 
to  say  maddening,  to  grown-up  people.  One  was  an  imaginary 
language  in  which  even  the  word  "  Yes  "  was  a  trisyllable, 


MEMBLAND  37 

namely  :  "Sheepartee,"  and  the  word  for  "  No  "  was  even  longer 
and  more  complicated,  namely  :  "  Quiliquinino."  We  used  to 
talk  tins  language,  which  was  called  "  Sheepartee,"  and  which 
consisted  of  unmitigated  gibberish,  for  hours  in  the  nursery, 
till  Hilly,  Grace,  and  Annie  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and  Everard 
came  up  one  evening  and  told  us  the  language  must  stop  or  we 
should  be  whipped. 

The  language  stopped,  but  a  game  grew  out  of  it,  which  was 
most  complicated,  and  lasted  for  years  even  after  we  went  to 
school.  The  game  was  called  "  Spankaboo."  It  consisted  of 
telling  and  acting  the  story  of  an  imaginary  continent  in  which 
we  knew  the  countries,  the  towns,  the  government,  and  the 
leading  people.  These  countries  were  generally  at  war  with  one 
another.  Lady  Spankaboo  was  a  prominent  lady  at  the  Court 
of  Doodahn.  She  was  a  charming  character,  not  beautiful  nor 
clever,  and  sometimes  a  little  bit  foolish,  but  most  good-natun  d 
and  easily  taken  in.  Her  husband,  Lord  Spankaboo,  was  a 
country  gentleman,  and  they  had  no  children.  She  wore  red 
velvet  in  the  evening,  and  she  was  biett  vue  at  Court. 

There  were  hundreds  of  characters  in  the  game.  They  in- 
creased as  the  story  grew.  It  could  be  played  out  of  doors, 
where  all  the  Larger  trees  in  the  garden  were  forts  belonging  to  the 
various  countries,  or  indoors,  but  it  was  chiefly  played  in  the 
garden,  or  after  we  went  to  bed.  Then  Hugo  would  say  :  "  Let's 
play  Spankaboo,"  and  I  would  go  straight  on  with  the  latest 
events,  interrupting  the  narrative  every  now  and  then  by  saying  : 
'  Now,  you  be  Lady  Spankaboo,"  or  whoever  the  character  on 
the  stage  might  be  for  the  moment,  "  and  I'll  be  So-and-so." 
Everything  that  happened  to  us  and  everything  we  read  was 
brought  into  the  game— history,  geography,  the  ancient  Romans, 
the  Greeks,  the  French  ;  but  it  was  a  realistic  game,  and  there 
were  no  fairies  in  it  and  nothing  in  the  least  frightening.  As 
it  was  a  night  game,  this  was  just  as  well. 

Hugo  was  big  for  his  age,  with  powerful  lungs,  and  after 
luncheon  he  used  to  sing  a  song  called  "  Apples  no  more,"  with 
immense  effect.  Hugo  was  once  told  tin-  following  riddle  : 
"  Why  «  an't  an  engine-driver  sit  down  ?  " — to  which  the  answer 
is,  "  Because  he  has  a  tender  behind."  He  asked  this  to  my 
mother  at  luncheon  the  next  day,  and  when  nobody  could  tmess 
it,   he  said:    "  Because   he   has  a  soft    behind."     There  was  a 

groom  in  the  stables  who  had  rather  a  Japanese  cast  of  face, 


38  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  we  used  to  call  him  le  Japonnais.  One  day  Hugo  went 
and  stood  in  front  of  him  and  said  to  him :  "  You're  the 
Japonais."  On  another  occasion  when  Hugo  was  learning  to 
conjugate  the  auxiliary  verb  etre,  Cherie  urged  him  to  add  a 
substantive  after  "  Je  suis,"  to  show  he  knew  what  he  was 
doing.     "  Je  suis  une  plume,"  said  Hugo. 

We  were  constantly  in  D.'s  room  and  used  to  play  sad  tricks 
on  her.  She  rashly  told  us  one  day  that  her  brother  Jim  had 
once  taken  her  to  a  fair  at  Wallington  and  had  there  shown  her 
a  Punch's  face,  in  gutta-percha,  on  the  wall.  "  Go  and  touch 
his  nose,"  had  said  Jim.  She  did  so,  and  the  face  being  charged 
with  electricity  gave  her  a  shock. 

This  story  fired  our  imagination  and  we  resolved  to  follow 
Jim's  example.  We  got  a  galvanic  battery,  how  and  where,  I 
forget,  the  kind  which  consists  of  a  small  box  with  a  large 
magnet  in  it,  and  a  handle  which  you  turn,  the  patient  holding 
two  small  cylinders.  We  persuaded  D.  to  hold  the  cylinders, 
and  then  we  made  the  current  as  strong  as  possible  and  turned 
the  handle  with  all  our  might.  Poor  D.  screamed  and  tears 
poured  down  her  cheeks,  but  we  did  not  stop,  and  she  could 
not  leave  go  because  the  current  contracts  the  fingers  ;  we  went 
on  and  on  till  she  was  rescued  by  someone  else. 

Another  person  we  used  to  play  tricks  on  was  M.  Butat,  the 
cook,  and  one  day  Hugo  and  I,  to  his  great  indignation,  threw  a 
dirty  mop  into  his  stock-pot. 

A  great  ally  in  the  house  was  the  housekeeper,  Mrs.  Tudgay. 
Every  day  at  eleven  she  would  have  two  little  baskets  ready  for 
us,  which  contained  biscuits,  raisins  and  almonds,  two  little 
cakes,  and  perhaps  a  tangerine  orange. 

To  the  outside  world  Mrs.  Tudgay  was  rather  alarming. 
She  had  a  calm,  crystal,  cold  manner ;  she  was  thin,  reserved, 
rather  sallow,  and  had  a  clear,  quiet,  precise  way  of  saying 
scathing  and  deadly  things  to  those  whom  she  disliked.  Once 
when  Elizabeth  was  grown  up  and  married  and  happened  to  be 
staying  with  us,  Mrs.  Tudgay  said  to  her  :  "  You're  an  expense 
to  his  Lordship."  Once  when  she  engaged  an  under-housemaid 
she  said  :  "  She  shall  be  called — nothing — and  get  £15  a  year." 
But  for  children  she  had  no  terrors.  She  was  devoted  to  us, 
bore  anything,  did  anything,  and  guarded  our  effects  and 
belongings  with  the  vigilance  of  a  sleepless  hound.  She  had 
formerly  been  maid  to  the  Duchess  of  San  Marino  in  Italy, 


MEMBLAND  39 

and  she  had  a  fund  of  stories  about  Italy,  a  scrap-book  full 
of  Italian  pictures  and  photographs,  and  a  silver  cross  con- 
taining a  relic  of  the  True  Cross  given  her  by  Pope  Pius  ix. 
We  very  often  spent  the  evening  in  the  housekeeper's  room, 
and  played  Long  Whist  with  Mrs.  Tudgay,  D.,  Mr.  Deacon,  and 
John's  servant,  M'.  Thompson. 

When,  in  the  morning,  we  were  exhausted  from  playing 
forts  and  Spankaboo  in  the  garden,  we  used  to  leap  through 
Mrs.  Tudgay 's  window  into  the  housekeeper's  room,  which  was 
on  the  ground  floor  and  looked  out  on  to  the  garden,  and  demand 
refreshment,  and  Mrs.  Tudgay  used  to  bring  two  wine  glasses  of 
ginger  wine  and  some  biscuits. 

Sometimes  we  used  to  go  for  picnics  with  Mrs.  Tudgay,  D., 
Hilly,  and  the  other  servants.  We  started  out  in  the  morning 
and  took  luncheon  with  us,  which  was  eaten  at  one  of  the  many 
keepers'  houses  on  the  coast,  some  of  which  had  a  room  kept  for 
expeditions,  and  then  spent  the  afternoon  paddling  on  the 
rocks  and  picking  shells  and  anemones.  We  never  bathed,  as 
there  was  not  a  single  beach  on  my  father's  estate  where  it  was 
possible.  It  was  far  too  rocky.  Mrs.  Tudgay  had  a  small  and 
ineffectual  Pomeranian  black  dog  called  Albo,  who  used  to  be 
taken  on  these  expeditions.  Looking  back  on  these,  I  wonder 
at  the  quantity  of  food  D.  and  Mrs.  Tudgay  used  to  allow  us  to 
eat.  Hugo  and  I  thought  nothing  of  eating  a  whole  lobster 
apiece,  besides  cold  beef  and  apple  tart. 

Sometimes  we  all  went  expeditions  with  my  mother.  Then 
there  used  to  be  sketching,  and  certainly  more  moderation  in 
the  way  of  food. 

Membland  was  close  to  the  sea.  My  father  made  a  ten- 
mile  drive  along  the  cliffs  so  that  you  could  drive  from  the 
house  one  way,  make  a  complete  circle,  and  comeback  following 
the  seacoast  all  the  way  to  the  river  Yealm,  on  one  side  of 
which  was  the  village  of  Newton  Ferrers  and  on  the  other  the 
village  of  Noss  Mayo.  Both  villages  straggled  down  the  slopes 
of  a  steep  hill.  Noss  Mayo  had  many  white-washed  and  straw- 
thatched  cottages  and  some  new  cottages  of  Devonshire  stone 
built  by  my  father,  with  slate  roofs,  but  not  ugly  or  aggressive. 
Down  the  slopes  of  Noss  there  were  fields  and  orchards,  and  here 
and  there  a  straw-thatched  cottage.  They  were  both  fishing 
villages,  the  Yealm  lying  beneath  them,  a  muddy  stretch  at 
low  tide  and  a  brimming  river  at  high  tide.     Newton  had  an  old 


40  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

grey  Devonshire  church  with  a  tower  at  the  west  end.  At  Noss 
my  father  built  a  church  exactly  the  same  in  pattern  of  Devon- 
shire stone.  You  could  not  have  wished  for  a  prettier  village 
than  Noss,  and  it  had,  as  my  mother  used  to  say :  "  a  little 
foreign  look  about  it." 

At  different  points  of  this  long  road  round  the  cliffs,  which 
in  the  summer  were  a  blaze  of  yellow  gorse,  there  were  various 
keepers'  cottages,  as  I  have  said.     From  one  you  looked  straight 
on  to  the  sea  from  the  top  of  the  cliff.     Another  was  hidden  low 
down  among  orchards  and  not  far  from  the  old  ruined  church 
of  Revelstoke.    A  third,  called  Battery  Cottage,  was  built  near 
the  emplacement  of  an  old  battery  and  looked  out  on  to  the 
Mewstone  towards   Plymouth  Sound   and   Ram   Head.     The 
making  of  this  road  and  the  building  of  the  church  were  two 
great  events.    Pieces  of  the  cliff  had  to  be  blasted  with  dynamite, 
which  was  under  the  direction  of  a  cheery  workman  called  Mr. 
Yapsley,   during  the  road-making,  and  the  building  of  the 
church  which  was  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Crosbie,  the  Clerk  of  the 
Works,  whom  we  were  devoted  to,  entailed  a  host  of  interesting 
side-issues.     One  of  these  was  the  carving  which  was  done  by 
Mr.  Harry  Hems  of  Exeter.     He  carved  the  bench-ends,  and  on 
one  of  them  was  a  sea  battle  in  which  a  member  of  the  Bulteel 
family,  whom  we  took  to  be  Uncle  Johnny,  was  seen  hurling  a 
stone  from  a  mast's  crows'  nest  in  a  sailing  ship,  on  to  a  serpent 
which  writhed  in  the  waves.     Hugo  and  I  both  sat  for  cherubs' 
heads,  which  were  carved  in  stone  on  the  reredos.     There  were 
some  stained-glass  windows  and  a  hand-blown  organ  on  which 
John  used  to  play  on  Sundays  when  it  was  ready. 

The  church  was  consecrated  by  the  Bishop  of  Exeter, 
Bishop  Temple. 

Hugo  and  I  learned  to  ride  first  on  a  docile  beast  called 
Emma,  who,  when  she  became  too  lethargic,  was  relegated  to  a 
little  cart  which  used  to  be  driven  by  all  of  us,  and  then  on  a 
Dartmoor  pony  called  the  Giant,  and  finally  on  a  pony  called 
Emma  Jane. 

The  coachman's  name  was  Bilky.  He  was  a  perfect  Devon- 
shire character.  His  admiration  for  my  brothers  was  un- 
bounded. He  used  to  talk  of  them  one  after  the  other,  afraid 
if  he  had  praised  one,  he  had  not  praised  the  others  enough. 
My  brother  Everard,  whom  we  always  called  the  "  Imp,"  he  said 
was  as  strong  as  a  lion  and  as  nimble  as  a  bee.     "  They  have 


MEMBLAND  41 

rightly,  sir,  named  you  the  1  limp,"  one  of  the  servants  said  to 
him  one  day. 

During  all  these  years  we  had  extraordinarily  few  illnesses. 
Hugo  once  had  whooping-cough  at  London,  and  I  was  put  in  the 
same  room  so  as  to  have  it  at  the  same  time,  and  although  I  v 
longing  to  catch  it,  as  Hugo  was  rioting  in  presents  and  delicacies 
as  well  as  whoops,  my  constitution  was  obstinately  imperviou- 
to  infection. 

We  often  had  colds,  entailing  doses  of  spirits  of  nitre,  linseed 
poultices,  and  sometimes  even  a  mustard  poultice,  but  I  never 
remember  anything  more  serious.  Every  now  and  then  Hilly 
thought  it  necessary  to  dose  us  with  castor-oil,  and  the  struggles 
that  took  place  when  Hilly  used  to  arrive  with  a  large  spoon, 
saying,  as  every  Nanny  I  have  ever  known  says  :  "  Now,  take 
it  !  "  were  indescribable.  I  recollect  five  people  being  necessary 
one  day  to  hold  me  down  before  the  castor-oil  could  be  got 
down  my  throat.  We  had  a  charming  comfortable  country 
doctor  called  Doctor  Atkins,  who  used  to  drive  over  in  a  dog- 
cart, muffled  in  wraps,  and  produce  a  stethoscope  out  of  his  hat. 
He  was  so  genial  and  comfortable  that  one  began  to  feel  better 
directly  he  felt  one's  pulse. 

When  we  first  went  to  Membland  the  post  used  to  be  brought 
by  a  postman  who  walked  every  day  on  foot  from  Ivy  Bridge, 
ten  miles  off.  He  had  a  watch  the  size  of  a  turnip,  and  the 
stamps  at  that  time  were  the  dark  red  ones  with  the  Que. 
head  on  them.  Later  the  post  came  in  a  cart  from  Plympton, 
and  finally  from  Plymouth. 

In  the  autumn,  visitors  used  to  begin  to  arrive  for  the 
covert  shooting,  which  was  good  and  picturesque,  the  pheasants 
flying  high  in  the  steep  woods  on  the  banks  of  the  Yealm,  and 
during  the  autumn  months  the  nearing  approach  of  Christmas 
cast  an  aura  of  excitement  over  life.  The  first  question  w 
Would  there  be  a  Christmas  tree  ?  During  all  the  early  \ 
there  was  one  regularly. 

After   the    November    interval    in    London,    which    1    have 
already  described,   the  serious  business  of  getting   tin-   I 
ready    began.      It   was   a   large  tree,   and   stood   in   a   square 
green  box. 

The  first    I  remember  was  placed  in  the  drawing-room,  the 
next  in  the  dining-room,  the  next  in  the  billiard-room,  i 
after  thai  they  were  always  in  the  covered-in  tennis  court,  which 


42  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

had  been  built  in  the  meanwhile.  The  decoration  of  the  tree  was 
under  the  management  of  D.  The  excitement  when  the  tree 
was  brought  into  the  house  or  the  tennis  court  for  the  first  time 
was  terrific,  and  Mr.  Ellis,  the  house-carpenter,  who  always  wore 
carpet  shoes,  climbed  up  a  ladder  and  affixed  the  silver  fairy  to 
the  top  of  the  tree.  Then  reels  of  wire  were  brought  out,  scissors, 
boxes  of  crackers,  boxes  of  coloured  candles,  glass-balls,  clips  for 
candles,  and  a  quantity  of  little  toys. 

Hugo  and  I  were  not  allowed  to  do  much.  Nearly  every- 
thing we  did  was  said  to  be  wrong.  The  presents  were,  of  course, 
kept  a  secret  and  were  done  up  in  parcels,  and  not  brought  into 
the  room  until  the  afternoon  of  Christmas  Eve. 

The  Christmas  tree  was  lit  on  Christmas  Eve  after  tea.  The 
ritual  was  always  the  same.  Hugo  and  I  ran  backwards  and 
forwards  with  the  servants'  presents.  The  maids  were  given 
theirs  first, — they  consisted  of  stuff  for  a  gown  done  up  in  a  parcel, 
— then  Mrs.  Tudgay,  D.,  and  the  upper  servants.  One  year  Mrs. 
Tudgay  had  a  work-basket. 

Then  the  guests  were  given  their  presents,  and  we  gave  our 
presents  and  received  our  own.  The  presents  we  gave  were 
things  we  had  made  ourselves  :  kettle-holders,  leather  slippers 
worked  in  silk  for  my  father,  and  the  girls  sometimes  made  a 
woollen  waistcoat  or  a  comforter.  Cherie  always  had  a  nice 
present  for  my  mother,  which  we  were  allowed  to  see  beforehand, 
and  she  always  used  to  say  :  "  N'y  touchez  pas,  la  fraicheur  en 
fait  la  beaute." 

Our  presents  were  what  we  had  put  down  beforehand  in  a 
list  of  "  Christmas  Wants  " — a  horse  and  cart,  a  painting-box,  or 
a  stylograph  pen. 

The  house  used  to  be  full  at  Christmas.  My  father's 
brothers,  Uncle  Tom  and  Uncle  Bob,  used  to  be  there.  Madame 
Neruda  I  remember  as  a  Christmas  visitor.  Godfrey  Webb 
wrote  the  following  lines  about  Christmas  at  Membland  : 

CHRISTMAS  AT  MEMBLAND 
"  Who  says  that  happiness  is  far  to  seek  ? 
Here  have  I  passed  a  happy  Christmas  week. 
Christmas  at  Membland — all  was  bright  and  gay, 
Without  one  shadow  till  this  final  day. 
When  Mrs.  Baring  said,  '  Before  you  go 
You  must  write  something  in  the  book,  you  know.' 
I  must  write  something — that's  all  very  well, 


MEMBLAND  43 

But  what  to  write  about  I  cannot  tell. 

Where  shall  I  look  for  help  ? — it  must  be  found, 

If  I  survey  this  Christmas  party  round. 

There's  Ned  himself,  our  most  delightful  host, 

Or  Mrs.  Baring,  she  could  help  me  most. 

The  Uncles  too,  if  I  their  time  might  rob. 

Shall  I  ask  Tom  ?    or  try  my  luck  with  Bob  ? 

Madame  Neruda,  ah,  would  she  begin, 

We'd  write  the  story  of  a  violin, 

And  tell  how  first  the  inspiration  came 

Which  took  the  world  by  storm  and  gave  her  fame. 

There's  Harry  Bourke,  with  him  I  can't  go  wrong. 

Could  I  but  write  the  words  he'd  sing  the  song. 

So  sung,  my  verse  would  haply  win  a  smile 

From  his  bright  beauty  of  the  sister  Isle, 

Who  comes  prepared  her  country's  pride  to  save, 

For  every  Saxon  is  at  once  her  slave  ; 

But  no,  I  must  not  for  assistance  look, 

So,  Mrs.  Baring,  you  must  keep  your  book 

For  cleverer  pens  and  I  no  more  will  trouble  you, 

But  just  remain  your  baffled  bard."  G.  W.  (1879). 


Mr.  Webb  was  a  great  feature  in  the  children's  life  of  many 
families.  With  his  beady,  bird-like  eye  and  his  impassive  face 
he  made  jokes  so  quietly  that  you  overheard  them  rather  than 
heard  them.  One  day  out  shooting  on  a  steep  hill  in  Newton 
Wood,  in  which  there  were  woodcock  and  dangerous  shots,  my 
father  said  to  him,  "  You  take  the  middle  drive,  Godfrey;  it's 
safer,  medio  tutissimus."  "  Is  there  any  chance  of  an  Ibis  ?  " 
Mr.  Webb  asked  quietly.  Another  time,  he  went  out  duck- 
shooting.  He  was  asked  afterwards  whether  he  had  shot  many. 
"Not  even  a  Mallard  imaginaire,"  was  his  answer. 

Another  Christmas  event  was  the  French  play  we  used  to 
act  under  the  stage  management  of  Ch£rie. 

When  I  was  six  I  played  the  part  of  an  old  man  with 
a  bald  forehead  and  white  tufts  of  hair  in  a  play  called  Le 
Maitrc  d'Ecole,  and  I  remember  playing  the  part  of  Nicole 
in  scenes  from  the  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme  at  Christmas  in 
1883,  and  an  old  witch  called  Mathurine  in  a  play  called 
Le  Talisman  in  January  1884. 

One  of  our  most  ambitious  efforts  was  a  play  called  La  Gram- 
maire,  by  Labiche :  it  proved  too  ambitious,  and  never  got 
further  than  a  dress  rehearsal  in  the  schoolroom.  In  thi>  play, 
Elizabeth  had  the  part  of  the  heroine,  and  had  to  be  elegantly 


44  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

dressed ;  she  borrowed  a  grown-up  gown,  and  had  her  hair 
done  up,  but  she  took  such  a  long  time  preening  herself  that  she 
missed  her  cue,  which  was  :  "  L'ange  la  voici !  "  It  was  spoken 
by  Margaret,  who  had  a  man's  part. 

'  L'ange  la  voici !  "  said  Margaret  in  ringing  tones,  but  no 
ange  appeared.  "  L'ange  la  voici !  "  repeated  Margaret,  with 
still  greater  emphasis,  but  still  no  ange;  finally,  not  without 
malice,  Margaret  almost  shouted,  "  L'ange  la  voici  !  "  and  at 
last  Elizabeth  tripped  blushing  on  to  the  stage  with  the  final 
touches  of  her  toilette  still  a  little  uncertain.  In  the  same  play, 
Susan  played  the  part  of  a  red-nosed  horse-coper,  dressed  in  a 
grey-tailed  coat,  called  Machut. 

Another  source  of  joy  in  Membland  life  was  the  yacht,  the 
Waterwitch,  which  in  the  summer  months  used  to  sail  as  soon  as 
the  Cowes  Regatta  was  over,  down  to  the  Yealm  River.  The 
Waterwitch  was  a  schooner  of  150  tons  ;  it  had  one  large  cabin 
where  one  had  one's  meals,  my  mother's  cabin  aft,  a  cabin  for 
my  father,  and  three  spare  cabins.  The  name  of  the  first  captain 
was  Goomes,  but  he  was  afterwards  replaced  by  Bletchington. 
Goomes  was  employed  later  by  the  German  Emperor.  He  had 
a  knack  of  always  getting  into  rows  during  races,  and  even  on 
other  occasions. 

One  day  there  was  a  regatta  going  on  on  the  Yealm  River  ; 
the  gig  of  the  Waterwitch  was  to  race  the  gig  of  another  yacht. 
They  had  to  go  round  a  buoy.  For  some  reason,  I  was  in  the 
Waterwitch' s  gig  when  the  race  started,  sitting  in  the  stern  next 
to  Goomes,  who  was  steering.  All  went  well  at  first,  but  when  the 
boats  were  going  round  the  buoy  they  fouled,  and  Goomes  and 
the  skipper  of  the  rival  gig  were  soon  engaged  in  a  hand-to-hand 
combat,  and  beating  each  other  hard  with  the  steering-lines.  My 
father  and  the  rest  of  the  family  were  watching  the  race  on 
board  the  yacht.  I  think  I  was  about  six  or  seven.  My  father 
shouted  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  "  Come  back,  come  back,"  but 
to  no  avail,  as  Goomes  and  the  other  skipper  were  fighting  like 
two  dogs,  and  the  boats  were  almost  capsizing.  I  think  Goomes 
won  the  fight  and  the  race.  I  remember  enjoying  it  all  heartily, 
but  not  so  my  father  on  board  the  yacht. 

Bletchington  was  a  much  milder  person  and,  besides  being  a 
beautiful  sailor,  one  of  the  gentlest  and  most  beautiful-mannered 
mariners  I  have  ever  met.  He  was  invariably  optimistic,  and 
always  said  there  was  a  nice  breeze.     This  sometimes  tempted 


M  I.M  BLAND  45 

the  girls,  who  were  bad  sailors,  to  go  out  sailing,  but  they  always 
regretted  it  and  used  to  come  back  saying,  "  How  foolish  we 
were  to  be  taken  in  !  "  Hugo  and  I  were  good  sailors  and  en  joy  '1 
the  yacht  more  than  anything.  John  was  an  expert  in  the 
handling  of  a  yacht,  but  the  "  Imp  "  nearly  died  of  sea-sickness 
if  ever  he  ventured  on  board. 

Captain  Bletchington  taught  Hugo  and  myself   a  song  in 
Fiji  language.     It  ran  like  this  : 


"  Tang  a  rang  a  chicky  nee,  picky-nicky  wooa, 
Tarra  iddy  ucky  chucky  chingo." 


Which  meant  : 

"  All  up  and  down  the  river  they  did  go  ; 
The  King  and  Queen  of  Otahiti." 

I  think  what  we  enjoyed  most  of  all  were  games  of  Hide- 
and-seek  on  board.  One  day  one  of  the  sailors  hid  us  by 
reefing  us  up  in  a  sail  in  the  sail-room,  a  hiding-place  which 
baffled  everyone.  The  Waterwitch  was  a  fast  vessel,  and  won 
the  schooners'  race  round  the  Isle  of  Wight  one  year  and  only 
narrowly  missed  winning  the  Queen's  Cup.  The  story  of  this 
race  used  to  be  told  us  over  and  over  again  by  D.,  and  used  to  be 
enacted  by  Hugo  and  me  on  our  toy  yachts  or  with  pieces  of 
cork  in  the  sink.  This  is  what  happened.  Another  school 
the  Cetonxa,  had  to  allow  the  Waterwitch  five  minutes,  but  the 
Water-ditch  had  to  allow  the  Sleuthhound,  a  cutter,  twenty-five 
minutes.  D.  was  watching  from  the  shore,  and  my  mother  was 
watching  from  the  R.Y.S.  Club.  The  Cetonxa  came  in  first, 
but  a  minute  or  two  later  the  Waterwitch  sailed  in  before  the 
five  minutes'  allowance  was  up.  Then  twenty  minutes  of 
dreadful  suspense  rolled  by,  twenty-three  minutes,  and  during 
the  last  two  minutes,  as  D.  dramatically  said,  "  That  'orrid 
Sleullihound  sailed  round  the  corner  and  won  the  race."  Hugo 
and  I  felt  we  could  never  forgive  the  owner  of  the  Sleuthhound. 

Besides  the  Waterwitch  there  was  a  little  steam  launch  call)  d 
t  h<  Wasp  which  used  to  take  us  in  to  Plymouth,  and  John  had  a 
sailing-boat  of  his  own. 


CHAPTER    IV 
MEMBLAND 

IN  the  summer  holidays  of  1883  Mr.  Warre  came  to  stay 
with  us.  John,  Cecil,  and  Everard  were  at  his  house  at 
Eton.  Cecil  was  to  read  with  him  during  the  holidays. 
Cecil  was  far  the  cleverest  one  of  the  family  and  a  classical 
scholar. 

Mr.  Warre  was  pleased  to  find  I  was  interested  in  the  stories 
of  the  Greek  heroes,  but  pained  because  I  only  knew  their  names 
in  French,  speaking  of  Thesee,  Medee,  and  Egee.  The  truth 
being  that  I  did  not  know  how  to  pronounce  their  names  in 
English,  as  I  had  learnt  all  about  them  from  Cherie.  Cherie 
said  that  Mr.  Warre  had  "une  tete  bien  equilibree."  We  per- 
formed Les  Enfants  d'Edouard  before  him. 

The  following  Christmas,  Mr.  Warre  sent  Hugo  a  magnificent 
book  illustrating  the  song  "  Apples  no  more,"  with  water-colour 
drawings  done  by  his  daughter  ;  and  he  sent  me  Church's  Stories 
from  Homer,  with  this  Latin  inscription  at  the  beginning  of  it : 

MAURICIO  BARING 

Jam  ab  ineunte  aetate 

Veterum  fautori 

antiquitatis  studioso 

Maeonii  carminis  argumenta 

Anglice  enucleata 

StreniA  propitia 

MITTIT 

EDMUNDUS  WARRE 

Kal.  Jan. 

mdccclxxxiii. 

Nobody  in  the  house  knew  what  the  Latin  word  strenid 

meant,  not  even   Walter  Durnford,  who  was  then  an  Eton 

master  and  destined  to  be  the  house  tutor  of  Hugo  and  myself 

later.     But  CheYie  at  once  said  it  meant  the  feast  of  the  New 

46 


MEM BLAND 


47 


Year.  The  scholars  were  puzzled  and  could  not  conceive  how 
she  had  known  this.  The  French  word  etrennes  had  given  her 
the  clue. 

The  whole  of  my  childhood  was  a  succession  of  crazes  for 
one  thing  after  another  :  the  first  one,  before  I  was  three,  was  a 
craze  for  swans,  then  came  trains,  then  chess,  then  carpentry, 
then  organs  and  organ-building.  My  mother  played  chess,  and 
directly  I  learnt  the  game  I  used  to  make  all  the  visitors  play  with 
me.  My  mother  used  to  say  that  she  had  once  bet  my  Aunt 
Effie  she  would  beat  her  twenty-one  games  running,  giving  her  a 
pawn  every  time.  She  won  twenty  games  and  was  winning  the 
twenty-first,  late  one  night  after  dinner,  when  my  father  said 
they  had  played  long  enough,  and  must  go  to  bed,  which  of 
course  they  refused  to  do.  He  then  upset  the  board,  and  my 
mother  said  she  had  never  been  so  angry  in  her  life ;  she  had 
bent  back  his  little  finger  and  had,  she  hoped,  really  hurt  him. 

I  can  remember  playing  chess  and  beating  Admiral  Glyn, 
who  came  over  from  Plymouth.  His  ship  was  the  Agincourt, 
a  large  four-funnelled  ironclad.  One  day  we  had  luncheon  on 
board,  and  my  father  was  chaffed  for  an  unforgettable  solecism, 
namely,  for  having  smoked  on  the  quarter-deck. 

Another  craze  was  history.  Cherie  gave  the  girls  a  most 
interesting  historical  task,  which  was  called  doing  Le  Siecle  de 
Pericles  and  Le  Siecle  de  Louis  XIV.,  or  whose-ever  the  century 
might  be. 

You  wrote  on  one  side  of  a  copy-book  the  chief  events  and 
dates  of  the  century  in  question,  and  on  the  other  side  short 
biographies  of  the  famous  men  who  adorned  it,  with  comments 
on  their  deeds  or  works.  I  implored  to  be  allowed  to  do  this, 
and  in  a  large  sprawling  handwriting  I  struggled  with  Le  Siecle 
de  Pericles,  making  up  for  my  want  of  penmanship  by  the 
passionate  admiration  I  felt  for  the  great  men  of  the  past.  My 
History  of  the  World  was  the  opposite  to  that  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  ! 

Somebody  gave  me  an  American  History  of  the  World,  a 
large  flat  book  which  told  the  histories  of  all  the  countries  of 
the  world  in  the  form  of  a  pictured  chart,  the  countries  being 
represented  by  long,  narrow  belts  or  strips,  so  that  you  could 
follow  the  destinies  of  the  various  Empires  running  parallel 
to  each  other  and  see  the  smaller  countries  being  absorbed  by 
the  greater.  The  whole  book  was  printed  on  a  long,  large, 
glazed  linen  sheet,  which  you  could  pull  out  all  at  one  time 


48  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

if  you  had  a  room  long  enough  and  an  unencumbered  door. 
You  could  also  turn  over  the  doubly  folded  leaves.  That  was 
the  more  convenient  way,  although  you  did  not  get  the  full 
effect.  This  book  was  a  mine  of  interest.  It  had  pictures  of 
every  kind  of  side-issue  and  by -event,  such  as  the  Seven 
Wonders  of  the  World,  the  Coliseum,  pictures  of  crusaders,  and 
portraits  of  famous  men. 

About  the  same  time  a  friend  of  Cecil's,  Claud  Lambton, 
gave  me  an  historical  atlas  which  was  also  a  great  treat.  Lessons 
continued  with  Cherie,  and  I  used  to  learn  passages  of  Racine 
("  Le  Recit  de  Theramene  ")  and  of  Boileau  ("  La  Mollesse,"  from 
the  Lutrin)  by  heart,  and  "  Les  Imprecations  de  Camille."  I  also 
read  a  good  deal  by  myself,  but  mostly  fairy-tales,  although 
there  were  one  or  two  grown-up  books  I  read  and  liked.  The 
book  I  remember  liking  best  of  all  was  a  novel  called  Too  Strange 
not  to  be  True,  by  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton,  which  my  mother 
read  out  to  my  cousin,  Bessie  Bulteel.  I  thought  this  a  wonder- 
ful book ;  I  painted  illustrations  for  it,  making  a  picture  of 
every  character. 

There  was  another  book  which  I  read  to  myself  and  liked,  if 
anything,  still  better.  I  found  it  in  Everard's  bedroom.  It  was 
a  yellow-backed  novel,  and  it  had  on  the  cover  the  picture  of 
a  dwarf  letting  off  a  pistol.  It  was  called  the  Siege  of  Castle 
Something  and  it  was  by — that  is  the  question,  who  was  it  by  ? 
I  would  give  anything  to  know.  The  name  of  the  author 
seemed  to  me  at  the  time  quite  familiar,  that  is  to  say,  a  name 
one  had  heard  people  talk  about,  like  Trollope  or  Whyte- 
Melville.  The  story  was  that  of  an  impecunious  family  who 
led  a  gay  life  in  London  at  a  suburban  house  called  the  Robber's 
Cave,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  They  were 
always  in  debt,  and  finally,  to  escape  bailiffs,  they  shut  them- 
selves up  in  a  castle  on  the  seacoast,  where  they  were  safe 
unless  a  bailiff  should  succeed  in  entering  the  house,  and  present 
the  writ  to  one  of  the  debtors  in  person.  The  bailiffs  tried  every 
expedient  to  force  a  way  into  the  castle,  one  of  them  dressing 
up  as  an  old  dowager  who  was  a  friend  of  the  family,  and  driving 
up  to  the  castle  in  a  custard-coloured  carriage.  But  the  inmates 
of  the  house  were  wily,  and  they  had  a  mechanical  device  by 
which  coloured  billiard  balls  appeared  on  the  frieze  of  the 
drawing-room  and  warned  them  when  a  bailiff  was  in  the  offing. 

One  day  when  they  had  a  visitor  to  tea,  a  billiard  ball 


MEMBLAND  49 

suddenly  made  a  clicking  noise  round  the  irieze.  '  \\  hat  is 
that  for?"  asked  the  interested  guest.  "That,"  said  the 
host,  with  great  presence  of  mind,  "is  a  signal  that  a  ship  is 
in  sight."  As  tea  went  on,  a  perfect  plethora  of  billiard  balls 
of  different  colours  appeared  in  the  frieze.  '  There  must  be 
a  great  many  ships  in  sight  to-day,"  said  the  guest.  "  A  great 
many,"  answered  the  host. 

Whether  a  bailiff  ever  got  into  the  house  I  don't  know.  The 
picture  on  the  cover  seems  to  indicate  that  he  did.  The  book 
was  in  Everard's  cupboard  for  years,  and  then,  "suddenly, 
as  rare  things  will,  it  vanished."  I  never  have  been  able  to  find 
it  again,  although  I  have  never  stopped  looking  for  it.  Once 
I  thought  I  had  run  it  to  earth.  I  once  met  at  the  Vice-Provost 's 
house  at  Eton  a  man  who  was  an  expert  lion-hunter  and  who 
seemed  to  have  read  every  English  novel  that  had  ever  been 
published.  I  described  him  the  book.  He  had  read  it.  He 
remembered  the  picture  on  the  cover  and  the  story,  but,  alas  ! 
he  could  recall  neither  its  name  nor  that  of  the  author. 

In  French  Les  Malheurs  de  Sophie,  Les  Mimoircs  d'un  Ane, 
Sans  Famillc,  were  the  first  early  favourites,  and  then  the 
numerous  illustrated  works  of  Jules  Verne. 

Walter  Scott's  novels  used  to  be  held  before  us  like  an 
alluring  bait.  "  When  you  are  nine  years  old  you  shall  read 
The  Talisman."  Even  the  order  in  which  Scott  was  to  be  read 
was  discussed.  The  Talisman  first,  and  then  Ivanhoe,  and  then 
Quentin  Durward,  Woodstock  and  Kenilworth,  Rob  Roy  and  Guy 
Mannering. 

The  reading  of  the  Waverley  Novels  was  a  divine,  far-off 
event,  to  which  all  one's  life  seemed  to  be  slowly  moving,  and 
as  soon  as  I  was  nine  my  mother  read  out  The  Talisman  to  me. 
The  girls  had  read  all  Walter  Scott  except,  of  course,  The  Heart 
of  Midlothian,  which  was  not,  as  they  said,  for  the  J. P.  {jeune 
per sonne)  and  (but  why  not,  I  don't  know)  Peveril  of  the 
Peak.  They  also  read  Miss  Yonge's  domestic  epics.  Then  I 
never  followed  them,  except  for  reading  The  Little  Duke,  The 
Lances  of  Lynwood,  and  the  historical  romance  of  The  Chaplet 
of  Pearls,  which  seemed  to  me  thrilling. 

I  believe  children  absorb  more  Kultur  from  the  stray  grown- 
up conversation  they  hear  than  they  learn  from  books.  At 
luncheon  one  heard  the  grown-up  people  discussing  book--  and 
Ch^rie  talking  of  new  French  novels.     Not  a  word  of  all  this 

4 


50  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

escaped  my  notice.  I  remember  the  excitement  when  John 
Inglesant  was  published  and  Marion  Crawford's  Mr.  Isaacs  and, 
just  before  I  went  to  school,  Treasure  Island. 

But  besides  the  books  of  the  day,  one  absorbed  a  mass  of 
tradition.  My  father  had  an  inexhaustible  memory,  and  he 
would  quote  to  himself  when  he  was  in  the  train,  and  at  any 
moment  of  stress  and  emotion  a  muttered  quotation  would 
rise  to  his  lips,  often  of  the  most  incongruous  kind.  Some- 
times it  was  a  snatch  of  a  hymn  of  Heber's,  sometimes  a  lyric 
of  Byron's,  sometimes  an  epitaph  of  Pope's,  some  lines  of 
Dryden  or  Churchill,  or  a  bit  of  Shakespeare. 

One  little  poem  he  was  fond  of  quoting  was  : 

"  Mrs.  Gill  is  very  ill 

And  nothing  can  improve  her, 
Unless  she  sees  the  Tuileries 

And  waddles  round  the  Louvre." 

I  believe  it  is  by  Hook.1  I  remember  one  twilight  at  the 
end  of  a  long  train  journey,  when  Papa,  muffled  in  a  large  ulster, 
kept  on  saying : 

"  False,  fleeting,  perjured  Clarence, 
That  stabbed  me  in  the  field  by  Tewkesbury," 

and  then  Byron's  "  I  saw  thee  weep,"  and  when  it  came  to 

"  It  could  not  match  the  living  rays  that  filled  that  glance  of  thine," 

there  were  tears  in  his  eyes.  Then  after  a  pause  he  broke  into 
Cowper's  hymn,  "  Hark  my  soul,"  and  I  heard  him  whispering  : 

"  Can  a  woman's  tender  care 
Cease  towards  the  child  she  bare  ? 
Yes,  she  may  forgetful  be, 
Yet  will  I  remember  thee." 

But  besides  quotations  from  the  poets  he  knew  innumerable 

tags,  epitaphs,  epigrams,  which  used  to  come  out  on  occasions : 

Sidney  Smith's  receipt  for  a  salad  ;  Miss  Fanshawe's  riddle, 

'Twas  whispered  in  heaven,  'twas  muttered  in  hell  "  ;  and 

many  other  poems  of  this  nature. 

My  father  spoke  French  and  German  and  Spanish.  He 
knew  many  of  Schiller's  poems  by  heart.  Soon  after  he  was 
married,  he  bet  my  mother  a  hundred  pounds  that  she  would 
not  learn  Schiller's  poem  "  Die  Glocke  "  by  heart.     My  mother 

1  It  is  by  Thackeray. 


MEMBLAND  51 

did  not  know  German.  The  feat  was  accomplished,  but  the 
question  was  how  was  he  to  be  got  to  hear  her  repeat  the  poem, 
for,  whenever  she  began  he  merely  groaned  and  said,  "  Don't, 
don't."  One  day  they  were  in  Paris  and  had  to  drive  some- 
where, a  long  drive  into  the  suburbs  which  was  to  take  an 
hour  or  more,  and  my  mother  began,  "  Fest  gemauert  in  del 
Erde,"  and  nothing  would  stop  her  till  she  came  to  the  end. 
She  won  her  hundred  pounds.  And  when  my  father's  silver 
wedding  came  about,  in  1886,  he  was  given  a  silver  bell  with 
some  lines  of  the  "  Glocke  "  inscribed  on  it. 

Mrs.  Christie  was  decidedly  of  the  opinion  that  we  ought  to 
learn  German,  and  so  were  my  father  and  mother,  but  German 
so  soon  after  the  Franco-Prussian  War  was  a  sore  subject  in  the 
house  owing  to  Cherie,  who  cried  when  the  idea  of  learning 
German  was  broached,  and  I  remember  one  day  hearing  my 
mother  tell  Mrs.  Christie  that  she  simply  couldn't  do  it.  So 
much  did  I  sympathise  with  Cherie  that  I  tore  out  a  picture  of 
Bismarck  from  a  handsome  illustrated  volume  dealing  with 
the  Franco-Prussian  War — an  act  of  sympathy  that  Cherie 
never  forgot.  So  my  father  and  mother  sadly  resigned  them- 
selves, and  it  was  settled  we  were  not  to  learn  German.  I  heard 
a  great  deal  about  German  poetry  all  the  same,  and  one  of 
the  outstanding  points  in  the  treasury  of  traditions  that  I 
amassed  from  listening  to  what  my  father  and  mother  said 
was  that  Goethe  was  a  great  poet.  I  knew  the  story  of  Faust 
from  a  large  illustrated  edition  of  that  work  which  used  to  lie 
about  at  Coombe. 

But  perhaps  the  most  clearly  denned  of  all  the  traditions 
that  we  absorbed  were  those  relating  to  the  actors  and  the 
singers  of  the  past,  especially  to  the  singers.  My  father  was 
no  great  idolator  of  the  past  in  the  matter  of  acting,  and  In- 
told  me  once  that  he  imagined  Macready  and  the  actors  of  his 
time  to  have  been  ranters. 

It  was  French  acting  he  preferred — the  art  of  Got,  Delaunay, 
and  Coquelin — although  Fechter  was  spoken  of  with  enthu- 
siasm, and  many  of  the  English  comedians,  the  Wigans,  Mrs. 
Keeley,  Sam  Sot hern,  Bnckstone.  The  Bancrofts  and  Hare 
and  Mrs.  Kendal  he  admired  enormously,  and  Toole  made  him 
shake  with  laughter. 

At  a  play  he  either  groaned  if  he  disliked  the  acting  or  shook 
with  laughter  if  amused,  or  cried  if  he  was  moved.     Irving 


52  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

made  him  groan  as  Romeo  or  Benedick,  but  he  admired  him  in 
melodrama  and  character  parts,  and  as  Shylock,  while  Ellen 
Terry  melted  him,  and  when  he  saw  her  play  Macbeth,  he  kept 
on  murmuring,  "The  dear  little  child."  But  it  was  the  musical 
traditions  which  were  the  more  important — the  old  days  of 
Italian  Opera,  the  last  days  of  the  bel  canto — Mario  and  Grisi 
and,  before  them,  Ronconi  and  Rubini  and  Tamburini. 

My  mother  was  never  tired  of  telling  of  Grisi  flinging  herself 
across  the  door  in  the  Lucrezia  Borgia,  dressed  in  a  parure 
of  turquoises,  and  Mario  singing  with  her  the  duet  in  the 
Huguenots.  Mario,  they  used  to  say,  was  a  real  tenor,  and  had 
the  right  methode.  None  of  the  singers  who  came  afterwards 
was  allowed  to  be  a  real  tenor.  Jean  de  Reszke  was  emphatic- 
ally not  a  real  tenor.  None  of  the  German  school  had  any 
tnethode.  I  suppose  Caruso  would  have  been  thought  a  real 
tenor,  but  I  doubt  if  his  methode  would  have  passed  muster. 
There  was  one  singer  who  had  no  voice  at  all,  but  who  was 
immensely  admired  and  venerated  because  of  his  methode.  I 
think  his  name  was  Signor  Brizzi.  He  was  a  singing-master, 
and  I  remember  saying  that  I  preferred  a  singer  who  had  just  a 
little  voice. 

My  father  loathed  modern  German  Opera.  Mozart,  Donizetti, 
Rossini,  and  Verdi  enchanted  him,  and  my  mother,  steeped  in 
classical  music  as  she  was,  preferred  Italian  operas  to  all  others. 
Patti  was  given  full  marks  both  for  voice  and  methode,  and 
Trebelli,  Albani,  and  Nilsson  were  greatly  admired.  But 
Wagner  was  thought  noisy,  and  Faust  and  Carmen  alone  of 
more  modern  operas  really  tolerated. 

Sometimes  my  mother  would  teach  me  the  accompaniments 
of  the  airs  in  Donizetti's  Lucrezia  Borgia,  while  she  played 
on  the  concertina,  and  she  used  always  to  say:  "  Do  try  and 
get  the  bass  right."  The  principle  was,  and  I  believe  it  to 
be  a  sound  one,  that  if  the  bass  is  right,  the  treble  will  take 
care  of  itself.  What  she  and  my  Aunt  M'aimee  called  playing 
with  a  foolish  bass  was  as  bad  as  driving  a  pony  with  a  loose 
rein,  which  was  for  them  another  unpardonable  sin. 

On  the  French  stage,  tradition  went  back  as  far  as  Rachel, 
although  my  mother  never  saw  her,  and  I  don't  think  my 
father  did  ;  but  Desclde  was  said  to  be  an  incomparable  artist, 
of  the  high-strung,  nervous,  delicate  type.  The  accounts  of 
her  remind  one  of  Elenora  Duse,  whose  acting  delighted  my 


MEMBLAND  53 

father  when  he  saw  her.     "  Est-elle  jolie  ?  "  someone  said  of 
Descl6e.     "  Non,  elle  est  pire." 

Another  name  which  meant  something  definite  to  me  was 
that  of  Fargeuil,  who  I  imagine  was  an  intensely  emotional 
actress  with  a  wonderful  charm  of  expression  and  utterance. 
My  father  was  never  surprised  at  people  preferring  the  new  to 
the  old.  He  seemed  to  expect  it,  and  when  I  once  told  him  later 
that  I  preferred  Stevenson  to  Scott,  a  judgment  I  have  since 
revised  and  reversed,  he  was  not  in  the  least  surprised,  and  said  : 
"  Of  course,  it  must  be  so;  it  is  more  modern."  But  he  was 
glad  to  find  I  enjoyed  Dickens,  laughed  at  Pickwick,  and 
thought  Vanity  Fair  an  interesting  book,  when  I  read  these 
books  later  at  school. 

We  were  taken  to  see  some  good  acting  before  I  went  to 
school.  We  saw  the  last  performances  of  School  and  Ours  at 
the  Haymarket  with  the  Bancrofts.  My  mother  always  spoke 
of  Mrs.  Bancroft  as  Marie  Wilton  :  we  saw  Hare  in  The  Colonel 
and  the  Quiet  Rubber ;  Mrs.  Kendal  in  the  Ironmaster,  and  Sarah 
Bernhardt  in  Hernani.  She  had  left  the  Theatre  francais 
then,  and  was  acting  with  her  husband,  M.  Damala.  This, 
of  course,  was  the  greatest  excitement  of  all,  as  I  knew  many 
passages  of  the  play,  and  the  whole  of  the  last  act  by  heart. 
I  can  remember  now  Sarah's  exquisite  modulation  of  voice 
when  she  said  : 

"  Tout  s'est  eteint,  flambeaux  et  musique  de  fete, 
Rien  que  la  nuit  et  nous,  felicity  parfaite." 

The  greatest  theatrical  treat  of  all  was  to  go  to  the  St.  James's 
Theatre,  because  Mr.  Hare  was  a  great  friend  of  the  family  and 
used  to  come  and  stay  at  Membland,  so  that  when  we  went  to  his 
theatre  we  used  to  go  behind  the  scenes.  I  saw  several  of  his 
plays  :  Pinero's  Hobby  Horse,  Lady  Clancarty,  and  the  first 
night  of  As  You  Like  It.  This  was  on  Saturday,  24th  January 
1885. 

One  night  we  were  given  the  Queen's  box  at  Covent  Garden 
by  Aunt  M'aim^e,  and  we  went  to  the  opera.     It  was  A  Ida. 

We  also  saw  Pasca  in  La  joiefail  pair,  so  that  the  tradition 
that  my  sisters  could  hand  on  to  their  children  was  linked  with 
a  distant  past. 

When  Mary  Anderson  first  came  to  London  we  went  to  see 
her  in  the  Lady  0/  Lyons,  and   never  shall  I  forget  her  first 


54  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

entrance  on  the  stage.  This  was  rendered  the  more  impressive 
by  an  old  lady  with  white  hair  making  an  entrance  just  before 
Mary  Anderson,  and  Cecil,  who  was  with  us,  pretending  to  think 
she  was  Mary  Anderson,  and  saying  with  polite  resignation  that 
she  was  a  little  less  young  than  he  had  expected.  When  Mary 
Anderson  did  appear,  her  beauty  took  our  breath  away  ;  she 
was  dressed  in  an  Empire  gown  with  her  hair  done  in  a  pinnacle, 
and  she  looked  like  a  picture  of  the  Empress  Josephine  :  radiant 
with  youth,  and  the  kind  of  beauty  that  is  beyond  and  above 
discussion  ;  eyes  like  stars,  classic  arms,  a  nobly  modelled  face, 
and  matchless  grace  of  carriage.  Next  year  we  all  went  in  a  box 
to  see  her  in  Pygmalion  and  Galatea,  a  play  that  I  was  never 
tired  of  reproducing  afterwards  on  my  toy  theatre. 

As  I  grew  older,  I  remember  going  to  one  or  two  grown-up 
parties  in  London.  One  was  at  Grosvenor  House,  a  garden 
party,  with,  I  think,  a  bazaar  going  on.  There  was  a  red-coated 
band  playing  in  the  garden,  and  my  cousin,  Betty  Ponsonby, 
who  was  there,  asked  me  to  go  and  ask  the  band  to  play  a  valse 
called  "  Jeunesse  Doree."  I  did  so,  spoke  to  the  bandmaster, 
and  walked  to  the  other  end  of  the  lawn.  To  my  surprise  I  saw 
the  whole  band  following  me  right  across  the  lawn,  and  taking 
up  a  new  position  at  the  place  I  had  gone  to.  Whether  they 
thought  I  had  meant  they  could  not  be  heard  where  they  were, 
I  don't  know,  but  I  was  considerably  embarrassed ;  so,  I  think, 
was  my  cousin,  Betty. 

Another  party  I  remember  was  at  Stafford  House.  My 
mother  was  playing  the  violin  in  an  amateur  ladies'  string-band, 
conducted  by  Lady  Folkestone.  My  cousin,  Bessie  Bulteel, 
had  to  accompany  Madame  Neruda  in  a  violin  solo  and  pianoforte 
duet.  The  Princess  of  Wales  and  the  three  little  princesses  were 
sitting  in  the  front  row  on  red  velvet  chairs.  The  Princess  of 
Wales  in  her  orders  and  jewels  seemed  to  me,  and  I  am  sure  to 
all  the  grown-up  people  as  well,  like  the  queen  of  a  fairy-tale 
who  had  strayed  by  chance  into  the  world  of  mortals  ;  she  was 
different  and  more  graceful  than  anyone  else  there. 

There  is  one  kind  of  beauty  which  sends  grown-up  people 
into  raptures,  but  which  children  are  quite  blind  to  ;  but  there 
is  another  and  rarer  order  of  beauty  which,  while  it  amazes  the 
grown-up  and  makes  the  old  cry,  binds  children  with  a  spell. 
It  is  an  order  of  beauty  in  which  the  grace  of  every  movement, 
the  radiance  of  the  smile,  and  the  sure  promise  of  lasting  youth 


MEMBLAND  55 

in  the  cut  of  the  face  make  you  forget  all  other  attributes,  how- 
ever perfect. 

Of  such  a  kind  was  the  grace  and  beauty  of  the  Princess  of 
Wales.     She  was  as  lovely  then  as  Queen  Alexandra. 

I  was  taken  by  my  father  in  my  black  velvet  suit.  I  was 
sitting  on  a  chair  somewhere  at  the  end  of  a  row,  and  couldn't 
see  very  well.  One  of  the  little  princesses  smiled  at  me  and 
beckoned  to  me,  so  I  boldly  walked  up  and  sat  next  to  them, 
and  the  Princess  of  Wales  then  took  me  on  her  knee,  greatly  to 
the  surprise  of  my  mother  when  she  walked  on  to  the  platform 
with  the  band.  The  audience  was  splendid  and  crowded  with 
jewelled  beauties,  and  I  remember  one  of  the  grown-ups  asking 
another  :  "  Which  do  you  admire  most,  Lady  Clarendon  or  Lady 
Dudley  ?  " 

Another  party  I  remember  was  an  afternoon  party  at  Sir 
Frederic  Leighton's  house,  with  music.  Every  year  he  gave 
this  party,  and  every  year  the  same  people  were  invited.  The 
music  was  performed  by  the  greatest  artists  :  Joachim,  Madame 
Neruda,  Piatti  the  violoncellist,  and  the  best  pianists  of  the 
day,  in  a  large  Moorish  room  full  of  flowers.  It  was  the  most 
intimate  of  concerts.  The  audk-nce,  which  was  quite  small, 
used  to  sit  in  groups  round  the  pianoforte,  and  only  in  the 
more  leisurely  London  of  the  'eighties  could  you  have  had  such 
an  exquisite  performance  and  so  naturally  cultivated,  so  un- 
affectedly musical  an  audience.  The  Leighton  party  looked 
like  a  Du  Maurier  illustration. 

When  we  were  in  London  my  father  would  sometimes  come 
back  on  Saturday  afternoons  with  a  present  for  one  of  us,  not  a 
toy,  but  something  much  more  rare  and  fascinating — a  snuff-box 
that  opened  with  a  trick,  or  a  bit  of  china.  These  were  kept  for 
us  by  CheYie  in  a  cupboard  till  we  should  be  older.  One  day 
he  took  out  of  a  vitrine  a  tiny  doll's  cup  of  dark  blue  Sevres 
which  belonged  to  a  large  service  and  gave  it  me,  and  I  have 
got  it  now.  But  the  present  I  enjoyed  more  than  any  I  have 
ever  received  in  my  life,  except,  perhaps,  the  fifty-shilling  train. 
was  one  day  when  we  were  walking  down  a  path  at  Membland, 
he  said  :  "This  is  your  path  ;  I  give  it  to  you  and  the  gate  at  the 
end."  It  was  the  inclusion  of  the  little  iron  gate  at  the  end 
which  made  that  present  poignantly  perfect. 

There  was  no  end  to  my  father's  generosity.  His  gifts  were 
on  a  large  scale  and  reached  far  and  wide.     He  used  to  colled 


56  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Breguet  watches  ;  but  he  did  not  keep  them  ;  he  gave  them 
away  to  people  who  he  thought  would  like  one.  He  had  a 
contempt  for  half  measures,  and  liked  people  to  do  the  big 
thing  on  a  large  scale.  "  So-and-so,"  he  used  to  say,  "  has  be- 
haved well."  That  meant  had  been  big  and  free-handed,  and 
above  small  and  mean  considerations.  He  liked  the  best  :  the 
old  masters,  a  Turner  landscape,  a  Velasquez,  a  Watteau  ; 
good  furniture,  good  china,  good  verse,  and  good  acting  ; 
Shakespeare,  which  he  knew  by  heart,  so  if  you  went  with 
him  to  a  play  such  as  Hamlet,  he  could  have  prompted  the 
players  ;  Schiller,  Juvenal,  Pope,  and  Dryden  and  Byron  ;  the 
acting  of  the  Comedie  francaise,  and  Ellen  Terry's  diction 
and  pathos.  Tennyson  was  spoilt  for  him  by  the  mere  exist- 
ence of  the  "  May  Queen  "  ;  but  when  he  saw  a  good  modern 
thing,  he  admired  it.  He  said  that  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell 
in  her  performance  of  Mrs.  Ebbsmith,  which  we  went  to  the 
first  night  of,  was  a  real  Erscheinung,  and  when  all  the  pictures 
of  Watts  were  exhibited  together  at  Burlington  House  he 
thought  that  massed  performance  was  that  of  a  great  man. 
He  was  no  admirer  of  Burne- Jones,  but  the  four  pictures  of 
the  "  Briar  Rose  "  struck  him  as  great  pictures. 

He  was  quite  uninsular,  and  understood  the  minds  and  the 
ways  of  foreigners.  He  talked  foreign  languages  not  only 
easily,  but  naturally,  without  effort  or  affectation,  and  native 
turns  of  expression  delighted  him,  such  as  a  German  saying, 
'  Lieber  Herr  Oberkellner,"  or,  as  I  remember,  a  Frenchman 
saying  after  a  performance  of  a  melodrama  at  a  Casino  where 
the  climax  was  rather  tamely  executed,  "  Ce  coup  de  pistolet 
etait  un  peu  mince."  And  once  I  won  his  unqualified  praise  by 
putting  at  the  end  of  a  letter,  which  I  had  written  to  my  Italian 
master  at  Florence,  and  which  I  had  had  to  send  via  the  city 
in  order  to  have  a  money  order  enclosed  with  it,  "  Abbi  la 
gentilezza  di  mandarmi  un  biglettino."  This  use  of  a  diminu- 
tive went  straight  to  my  father's  heart.  Nothing  amused  him 
more  than  instances  of  John  Bullishness ;  for  instance,  a  young 
man  who  once  said  to  him  at  ContrexeVille  :  "  I  hate  abroad." 

He  conformed  naturally  to  the  customs  of  other  countries, 
and  as  he  had  travelled  all  over  the  world,  he  was  familiar  with 
the  mind  and  habit  of  every  part  of  Europe.  He  was  com- 
pletely unselfconscious,  and  was  known  once  when  there  was 
a  ball  going  on  in  his  own  house  at  Charles  Street  to  have 


MEMBLAND  57 

disappeared  into  his  dressing-room,  undressed,  and  walked  in 
his  dressing-gown  through  the  dining-room,  where  people  were 
having  supper,  with  a  bedroom  candle  in  his  hand  to  the  back 
staircase  to  go  up  to  his  bedroom.  His  warmth  of  heart  was 
like  a  large  generous  fire,  and  the  people  who  warmed  their 
hands  at  it  were  without  number. 

With  all  his  comprehension  of  foreigners  and  their  ways,  he 
was  intensely  English  ;  and  he  was  at  home  in  every  phase  of 
English  life,  and  nowhere  more  so  than  pottering  about  farms 
and  fields  on  his  grey  cob,  saying :  "  The  whole  of  that  fence 
must  come  down — every  bit  of  it,"  or  playing  whist  and  saying 
about  his  partner,  one  of  my  aunts :  "  Good  God,  what  a  fool 
the  woman  is  !  " 

Whist  reminds  me  of  a  painful  episode.  I  have  already 
said  that  I  learnt  to  play  long  whist  in  the  housekeeper's  room. 
I  was  proud  of  my  knowledge,  and  asked  to  play  one  night  after 
dinner  at  Membland  with  the  grown-ups.  They  played  short 
whist.  I  got  on  all  right  at  first,  and  then  out  of  anxiety  I 
revoked.  Presently  my  father  and  mother  looked  at  each  other, 
and  a  mute  dialogue  took  place  between  them,  which  said 
clearly:  "Has  he  revoked?'  'Yes,  he  has."  They  said 
nothing  about  it,  and  when  the  rubber  was  over  my  father  said  : 
'  The  dear  little  boy  played  very  nicely."  But  I  minded  their 
not  knowing  that  I  knew  that  they  knew,  almost  as  much  as 
having  revoked.  It  was  a  bitter  mortification — a  real  humilia- 
tion. Later  on  when  I  was  bigger  and  at  school,  the  girls  and 
I  used  to  play  every  night  with  my  father,  and  our  bad  play, 
which  never  improved,  made  him  so  impatient  that  we  in- 
vented a  code  of  signals  saying,  "  Bechez  "  when  we  wanted 
spades  to  lead,  and  other  words  for  the  other  suits. 

A  person  whom  we  were  always  delighted  to  see  come  into 
the  house  was  our  Uncle  Johnny.  When  we  were  at  school  he 
always  tipped  us.  If  we  were  in  London  he  always  suggested 
going  to  a  play  and  taking  all  the  stalls. 

When  we  went  out  hunting  with  the  Dartmoor  foxhounds 
he  always  knew  exactly  what  the  fox  was  going  to  do,  and  where 
it  was  going.  And  he  never  bothered  one  at  the  Meet.  I 
always  thought  the  Meet  spoilt  the  fun  of  hunting.  Every 
person  one  knew  used  to  come  up,  say  that  either  one's  girths 
were  too  tight  or  one's  stirrups  too  long  or  too  short,  and  set 
about  making  some  alteration.     I  was  always  a  bad  horseman. 


58  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

although  far  better  as  a  child  than  as  a  grown-up  person.  And 
I  knew  for  certain  that  if  there  was  an  open  gate  with  a  crowd 
going  through  it,  my  pony  would  certainly  make  a  dart  through 
that  crowd,  the  gate  would  be  slammed  and  I  should  not  be 
able  to  prevent  this  happening,  and  there  would  be  a  chorus 
of  curses.  But  under  the  guidance  of  Uncle  Johnny  everything 
always  went  well. 

Whenever  he  came  to  Membland,  the  first  thing  he  would 
do  would  be  to  sit  down  and  write  a  letter.  He  must  have  had 
a  vast  correspondence.  Then  he  would  tell  stories  in  Devon- 
shire dialect  which  were  inimitable. 

There  are  some  people  who,  directly  they  come  into  the 
room,  not  by  anything  they  say  or  do,  not  by  any  display  of 
high  spirits  or  effort  to  amuse,  make  everything  brighter  and 
more  lively  and  more  gay,  especially  for  children,  and  Uncle 
Johnny  was  one  of  those.  As  the  Bulteel  family  lived  close  to 
us,  we  saw  them  very  often.  They  all  excelled  at  games  and 
at  every  kind  of  outdoor  sport.  The  girls  were  fearless  riders  and 
drivers  and  excellent  cricketers.  Cricket  matches  at  Membland 
were  frequent  in  the  summer.  Many  people  used  to  drive  from 
Plymouth  to  play  lawn-tennis  at  Pamflete,  the  Bulteels'  house. 

We  saw  most  of  Bessie  Bulteel,  who  was  the  eldest  girl.  She 
was  a  brilliant  pianist,  with  a  fairylike  touch  and  electric  execu- 
tion, and  her  advent  was  the  greatest  treat  of  my  childhood. 
She  told  thrilling  ghost  stories,  which  were  a  fearful  joy,  but 
which  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  pass  a  certain  piece  of 
Italian  furniture  on  the  landing  which  had  a  painted  Triton  on 
it.  It  looks  a  very  harmless  piece  of  furniture  now.  I  saw  it 
not  long  ago  in  my  brother  Cecil's  house.  It  is  a  gilt  writing- 
table  painted  with  varnished  figures,  nymphs  and  fauns,  in  the 
Italian  manner.  The  Triton  sprawls  on  one  side  of  it  recumbent 
beside  a  cool  source.  Nothing  could  be  more  peaceful  or  idyllic, 
but  I  remember  the  time  when  I  used  to  rush  past  it  on  the 
passage  in  blind  terror. 

A  picturesque  figure,  as  of  another  age,  was  my  great -aunt, 
Lady  Georgiana  Grey,  who  came  to  Membland  once  in  my  child- 
hood. She  was  old  enough  to  have  played  the  harp  to  Byron. 
She  lived  at  Hampton  Court  and  played  whist  every  night  of 
her  life,  and  sometimes  went  up  to  London  to  the  play  when 
she  was  between  eighty  and  ninety.  She  was  not  deaf,  her 
sight  was  undimmed,  and  she  had  a  great  contempt  for  people 


MEMBLAND  59 

who  were  afraid  of  draughts.  She  had  a  fine  aptitude  for  flat 
contradiction,  and  she  was  a  verbal  conservative,  that  is  to  say, 
she  had  a  horror  of  modern  locutions  and  abbreviations,  piano 
for  pianoforte,  balcfiny  for  balcuni,  cucumber  for  cowcumber, 
Montagu  for  Mountagu,  soot  for  sut,  yellow  for  yallow. 

She  wore  on  her  little  finger  an  antique  onyx  ring  with  a 
pig  engraved  on  it,  and  I  asked  her  to  give  it  me.  She  said  : 
"  You  shall  have  it  when  you  are  older."  An  hour  later  I  went 
up  to  her  room  and  said  :  "  I  am  older  now.  Can  I  have  the 
ring  ?  "  She  gave  it  me.  Nobody  ever  sat  at  a  table  so  bolt 
upright  as  she  did,  and  she  lived  to  be  ninety-nine.  She  came 
back  once  to  Membland  after  my  sisters  were  married. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  excitement  of  all  our  Membland  life 
was  when  the  whole  of  the  Harbord  family,  our  cousins,  used  to 
arrive  for  Christmas.  Our  excitement  know  no  bounds  when 
we  knew  they  were  coming,  and  Ch£rie  used  to  get  so  tired  of 
hearing  the  Harbords  quoted  that  I  remember  her  one  day 
in  the  schoolroom  in  London  opening  the  window,  taking  tin- 
lamp  to  it  and  saying :  "  J'ouvre  cette  fenetre  pour  eclairer 
la  famille  Harbord." 

On  rainy  days  at  Membland  there  were  two  rare  treats  : 
one  was  to  play  hide-and-seek  all  over  the  house  ;  the  other  was 
to  make  toffee  and  perhaps  a  gingerbread  cake  in  the  still- 
room.  The  toffee  was  the  ultra-sticky  treacle  kind,  and  the 
cake  when  finished  and  baked  always  had  a  wet  hole  in  the 
middle  of  it.  Hugo  and  I  used  to  spend  a  great  deal  of  time  in 
Mr.  Ellis'  carpenter's  shop.  We  had  tool-boxes  of  our  own,  and 
we  sometimes  made  Christmas  presents  for  our  father  and 
mother  ;  but  our  carpentry  was  a  little  too  imaginative  and 
rather  faulty  in  execution. 

Not  far  from  Membland  and  about  a  mile  from  Pamflete 
there  was  a  small  grey  Queen  Anne  house  called  "  Mothecombe." 
It  nestled  on  the  coast  among  orchards  and  quite  close  to  the 
sandy  beach  of  Mothecombe  Bay,  the  only  sandy  beach  on  cur 
part  of  the  South  Devon  coast.  This  house  belonged  to  the 
Mildmays,  and  we  often  met  the  Mildmay  family  when  we  went 
over  there  for  picnics. 

Aunt  Georgie  Mildmay  was  not  only  an  expert  photographer, 
but  she  was  one  of  the  first  of  those  rare  people  who  have 
had  a  real  talent  for  photography  and  achieved  beautiful  ami 
artistic  results  with  it,  both  in  portraits  and  landscapes. 


60  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Whenever  Hugo  and  I  used  to  go  and  see  her  in  London  at 
46  Berkeley  Square,  where  she  lived,  she  always  gave  us  a 
pound,  and  never  a  holiday  passed  without  our  visiting  Aunt 
Georgie. 

Mothecombe  was  often  let  or  lent  to  friends  in  summer.  One 
summer  Lady  de  Grey  took  it,  and  she  came  over  to  luncheon  at 
Membland,  a  vision  of  dazzling  beauty,  so  that,  as  someone  said, 
you  saw  green  after  looking  at  her.  It  was  like  looking  at  the 
sun.  The  house  was  often  taken  by  a  great  friend  of  our  family, 
Colonel  Ellis,  who  used  to  spend  the  summer  there  with  his 
family,  and  he  frequently  stayed  at  Membland  with  us.  I 
used  to  look  forward  to  going  down  to  dinner  when  he  was  there, 
and  listening  to  his  conversation.  He  was  the  most  perfect 
of  talkers,  because  he  knew  what  to  say  to  people  of  all  ages, 
besides  having  an  unending  flow  of  amusing  things  to  tell, 
for  he  made  everything  he  told  amusing,  and  he  would  some- 
times take  the  menu  and  draw  me  a  picture  illustrating  the 
games  and  topics  that  interested  us  at  the  moment.  We  had 
a  game  at  one  time  which  was  to  give  someone  three  people 
they  liked  equally,  and  to  say  those  three  people  were  on  the 
top  of  a  tower ;  one  you  could  lead  down  gently  by  the  hand, 
one  you  must  kick  down,  and  the  third  must  be  left  to  be 
picked  by  the  crows. 

We  played  this  one  evening,  and  the  next  day  Colonel  Ellis 
appeared  with  a  charming  pen-and-ink  drawing  of  a  Louis- 
Quinze  Marquis  leading  a  poudre  lady  gently  by  the  hand.  If 
he  gave  one  a  present  it  would  be  something  quite  unique — 
unlike  what  anyone  else  could  think  of ;  once  it  was,  for  me,  a 
silver  mug  with  a  twisted  handle  and  my  name  engraved  on  it 
in  italics,  "Maurice  Baring's  Mug,  1885."  His  second  son, 
Gerald,  was  a  little  bit  older  than  I  was,  and  we  were  great 
friends.  Gerald  had  a  delightfully  grown-up  and  blase*  manner 
as  a  child,  and  one  day,  with  the  perfect  manner  of  a  man  of 
the  world,  he  said  to  me,  talking  of  Queen  Victoria,  "  The  fact  is, 
the  woman's  raving  mad." 

We  used  to  call  Colonel  Ellis  "  the  gay  Colonel "  to  care- 
fully distinguish  him  from  Colonel  Edgcumbe,  whom  we 
considered  a  more  serious  Colonel.  The  Mount  Edgcumbes 
were  neighbours,  and  lived  just  over  the  Cornish  border  at 
Mount  Edgcumbe.  Colonel  Edgcumbe  was  Lord  Mount 
Edgcumbe 's  brother,  and  often  stayed  with  us.     He  used  to 


MEMBLAND  61 

be  mercilessly  teased,  especially  by  the  girls  of  the  Bulteel 
family.  One  year  he  was  shooting  with  us  and  the  Bulteels 
got  hold  of  his  cartridges  and  took  out  the  shot,  leaving  a 
few  good  cartridges. 

He  was  put  at  the  hot  corner.  Rocketing  pheasants  in 
avalanches  soared  over  his  head,  and  he,  of  course,  missed 
them  nearly  all,  shooting  but  one  or  two.  He  explained  for 
the  rest  of  the  day  that  it  was  a  curious  thing,  and  that  some- 
thing must  be  wrong,  either  with  his  eyes  or  with  the  climate. 
Some  new  way  of  tormenting  was  always  found,  and,  although 
he  was  not  the  kind  of  man  who  naturally  enjoys  a  practical 
joke,  he  bore  it  angelically. 

His  sister,  Lady  Ernestine,  was  rather  touchy  in  the  matter 
of  Devonshire  clotted  cream.  As  Mount  Edgcumbe  was  just 
over  the  border  in  Cornwall,  and  as  clotted  cream  was  made  in 
Cornwall  as  well  as  in  Devonshire,  she  resented  its  being  called 
Devonshire  cream  and  used  to  call  it  Cornish  cream  ;  but  when 
she  stayed  with  us,  not  wishing  to  concede  the  point  and  yet 
unwilling  to  hurt  our  feelings,  she  used  to  call  it  West -country 
cream. 

Another  delightful  guest  was  Miss  Pinkie  Browne,  who  was 
Irish,  gay,  argumentative,  and  contradictious,  with  smiling 
eyes,  her  hair  in  a  net,  and  an  infectious  laugh.  As  a  girl  she 
had  broken  innumerable  hearts,  but  had  always  refused  to 
marry,  as  she  never  could  make  up  her  mind.  She  was  ex- 
tremely musical,  and  used  to  sing  English  and  French  songs, 
accompanying  herself,  with  an  intoxicating  lilt  and  a  languishing 
expression.  As  Dr.  Smyth  says  about  Tosti's  singing,  it  was 
small  art,  but  it  was  real  art.  And  her  voice  must  have  had  a 
rare  quality,  as  she  was  about  fifty  when  I  heard  her.  Such 
singing  is  far  more  enjoyable  than  that  of  professional  singers, 
and  makes  one  think  of  Tosti's  saying  :  "  Le  chant  est  un  true." 
She  would  make  a  commonplace  song  poignantly  moving.  She 
used  to  sing  a  song  called  "  The  Conscript's  Farewell  "  : 

You  are  going  far  away,  far  away,  from  poor  Jeanette, 
There's  no  one  left  to  love  me  now,  and  you  will  soon  forget;" 

of  which  the  refrain  was  : 

"  Oh,  if  I   were  Queen  of  France, 
Or  still  better  Pope  of   Rome, 
1   would  have  no  fighting  men  abroad, 
No  weeping  maids  at  home." 


62  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Membland  was  always  full  of  visitors.  There  were  visitors 
at  Easter,  visitors  at  Whitsuntide,  in  the  autumn  for  the  shoot- 
ing, and  a  houseful  at  Christmas  :  an  uncle,  General  Baring, 
who  used  to  shoot  with  one  arm  because  he  had  lost  the  other 
in  the  Crimea  ;  my  father's  cousin,  Lord  Ashburton,  who  was 
particular  about  his  food,  and  who  used  to  say :  "  That's  a 
very  good  dish,  but  it's  not  veau  d  la  bourgeoise  "  ;  Godfrey 
Webb,  who  always  wrote  a  little  poem  in  the  visitors'  book  when 
he  went  away  ;  Lord  Granville,  who  knew  French  so  alarmingly 
well,  and  used  to  ask  one  the  French  for  words  like  a  big  stone 
upright  on  the  edge  of  a  road  and  a  ship  tacking,  till  one  longed 
to  say,  like  the  Red  Queen  in  Alice  in  Wonderland:  "  What's 
the  French  for  fiddle  de  dee  ?  " ;  Lord  and  Lady  Lansdowne, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Percy  Wyndham — Mr.  Wyndham  used  to  take  me 
out  riding ;  he  was  deliciously  inquisitive,  so  that  if  one  was 
laughing  at  one  side  of  the  table  he  would  come  to  one  quietly 
afterwards  and  ask  what  the  joke  had  been  about  ;  Harry 
Cust,  radiant  with  youth  and  spirits  and  early  success ;  Lady  de 
Clifford  and  her  two  daughters  (Katie  and  Maud  Russell),  she 
carrying  an  enormous  silk  bag  with  her  work  in  it — she  was  a 
kind  critic  of  our  French  plays ;  Lady  Airlie,  and  her  sister, 
Miss  Maude  Stanley,  who  started  being  a  vegetarian  in  the 
house,  and  told  me  that  Henry  vm.  was  a  much  misunderstood 
monarch  ;  Madame  Neruda,  and  once,  long  before  she  married 
him,  Sir  Charles  Halle\  Sir  Charles  Halle'  used  to  sit  down 
at  the  pianoforte  after  dinner,  and  nothing  could  dislodge  him. 
Variation  followed  variation,  and  repeat  followed  repeat  of  the 
stiffest  and  driest  classical  sonatas.  And  one  night  when  this 
had  been  going  on  past  midnight,  my  father,  desperate  with 
impatience  and  sleep,  put  out  the  electric  light.  I  am  not 
making  an  anachronism  in  talking  of  electric  light,  as  it  had 
just  been  put  in  the  house,  and  was  thought  to  be  a  most  daring 
innovation. 

We  had  a  telegraph  office  in  the  house,  which  was  worked 
by  Mrs.  Tudgay.  It  was  a  fascinating  instrument,  rather  like 
a  typewriter  with  two  dials  and  little  steel  keys  round  one  of 
them,  and  the  alphabet  was  the  real  alphabet  and  not  the 
Morse  Code.  It  was  convenient  having  this  in  the  house,  but 
one  of  the  results  was  that  so  many  jokes  were  made  with  it, 
and  so  many  bogus  telegrams  arrived,  that  nobody  knew 
whether  a  telegram  was  a  real  one  or  not. 


MEMBLAND  63 

Mr.  Walter  Durnford,  then  an  Eton  House  master,  and 
afterwards  Provost  of  King's,  in  a  poem  he  wrote  in  the 
visitors'  book,  speaks  of  Membland  as  a  place  where  every- 
thing reminded  you  of  the  presence  of  fairy  folk,  "  Where 
telegrams  come  by  the  dozen,  concocted  behind  the  door." 

Certainly  people  enjoyed  themselves  at  Membland,  and  the 
Christmas  parties  were  one  long  riot  of  dance, song,  and  laughter. 
Welcome  ever  smiled  at  Membland,  and  farewell  went  out 
sighing. 

As  I  got  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  age  of  ten,  when  it  was 
settled  that  I  should  go  to  school,  life  seemed  to  become  more 
and  more  wonderful  every  day.  Both  at  Membland  and  in 
Charles  Street  the  days  went  by  in  a  crescendo  of  happiness. 
Walks  with  Cherie  in  London  were  a  daily  joy,  especially  when 
we  went  to  Covent  Garden  and  bought  chestnuts  to  roast  for 
tea.  The  greatest  tea  treat  was  to  get  CheYie,  who  was  an 
inspired  cook,  to  make  something  she  called  la  petite  sauce. 
You  boiled  eggs  hard  in  the  kettle ;  and  then,  in  a  little  china 
frying-pan  over  a  spirit  lamp,  the  sauce  was  made,  of  butter, 
cream,  vinegar,  pepper,  and  the  eggs  were  cut  up  and  floated 
in  the  delicious  hot  mixture.  A  place  of  great  treats  where 
we  sometimes  went  on  Saturday  afternoons  was  the  Aquarium, 
where  acrobats  did  wonderful  things,  and  you  had  your  bumps 
told  and  your  portrait  cut  out  in  back-and-white  silhouette. 
The  phrenologist  was  not  happy  in  his  predictions  of  my  future, 
as  he  said  I  had  a  professional  and  mathematical  head,  and 
would  make  a  good  civil  engineer  in  after-life. 

Going  to  the  play  was  the  greatest  treat  of  all,  and  if  I 
heard  there  was  any  question  of  their  going  to  the  play  down- 
stairs, and  Mr.  Deacon,  my  father's  servant,  always  used  to 
tell  me  when  tickets  were  being  ordered,  I  used  to  go  on  my 
knees  in  the  night  nursery  and  pray  that  I  might  be  taken  too. 
Sometimes  the  answer  was  direct. 

One  night  my  mother  and  Lord  Mount  Edgcumbe  were 
going  to  a  pantomime  together  by  themselves.  Mr.  Deacon 
told  me,  and  asked  me  if  I  was  going  too,  but  nothing  had  been 
said  about  it.  I  prayed  hard,  and  I  went  down  to  my  mother's 
bedroom  as  she  was  dressing  for  dinner.  No  word  of  the  panto- 
mime was  mentioned  on  either  side.  She  then,  while  her  hair 
was  being  done  by  D.,  asked  for  a  piece  of  paper  and  scribbled 
a  note  and  told  me  to  take  it  down  to  my  father. 


64  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

I  did  so,  and  my  father  said  :  "  Would  you  like  to  go  to  the 
pantomime,  too  ?  "     The  answer  was  in  the  affirmative. 

What  a  fever  one  would  be  in  to  start  in  time  and  to  be 
there  at  the  beginning  on  nights  when  we  went  to  the  play ! 
how  terribly  anxious  not  to  miss  one  moment !  How  wonderful 
the  moment  was  before  the  curtain  went  up  !  The  delicious 
suspense,  the  orchestra  playing,  and  then  the  curtain  rising  on 
a  scene  that  sometimes  took  one's  breath  away,  and  how  calm 
the  grown-up  people  were.  They  would  not  look  at  the  red 
light  in  the  background,  the  pink  sky  which  looked  like  a  real 
pink  sky,  or  perhaps  some  moving  water.  People  say  some- 
times it  is  bad  for  children  to  go  to  the  theatre,  but  do  they 
ever  enjoy  anything  in  after  life  as  much  ?  Is  there  any  such 
magic  as  the  curtain  going  up  on  the  Demon's  cave  in  the 
pantomime,  or  the  sight  in  the  Transformation  scene  of  two 
silvery  fairies  rising  from  the  ground  on  a  gigantic  wedding  cake, 
and  the  clown  suddenly  breaking  on  the  scene,  shouting,  "  Here 
we  are  again  !  "  through  a  shower  of  gold  rain  and  a  cloud  of 
different -coloured  Bengal  lights  ?  Is  there  any  such  pleasure 
as  in  suddenly  seeing  and  recognising  things  in  the  flesh  one 
had  been  familiar  with  for  long  from  books  and  stories,  such 
as  Cinderella's  coach,  the  roc's  egg  in  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  or 
Aladdin's  cave,  or  the  historical  processions  of  the  kings  of 
England,  some  of  whom  you  clapped  and  some  of  whom  you 
hissed  ?  Oh  !  the  charm  of  changing  scenery !  a  ship  moving 
or  still  better  sinking,  a  sunset  growing  red,  a  forest  growing 
dark ;  and  then  the  fun  !  The  indescribable  fun,  of  seeing 
Cinderella's  sisters  being  knocked  about  in  the  kitchen,  or 
the  Babes  in  the  Wood  being  put  to  bed,  and  kicking  all 
their  bedclothes  off  directly  they  had  settled  down ;  or  best 
of  all,  the  clown  striking  the  pantaloon  with  the  red-hot 
poker  and  the  harlequin  getting  the  better  of  the  policeman  ! 
Harry  Paine  was  the  clown  in  those  days,  and  he  used,  in  a 
hoarse  voice,  to  say  to  the  pantaloon  :  "  I  say,  Joey."  "  Yes, 
master,"  answered  the  pantaloon  in  a  feeble  falsetto. 

Childhood  bereft  of  such  treats  I  cannot  help  thinking  must 
be  a  sad  affair ;  and  it  generally  happens  that  if  children  are 
not  allowed  to  go  to  the  play,  so  that  they  shall  enjoy  it  more 
when  they  are  grown-up,  they  end  by  never  being  able  to 
enjoy  it  at  all. 

One  great  event  of  the  summer  was  the  Eton  and  Harrow 


MEMBLAND  65 

match,  when  Cecil  and  Evcrard  used  to  come  up  from  Eton  with 
little  pieces  of  light  blue  silk  in  their  black  coats.  John  had 
gone  to  Cambridge,  and  I  hardly  remember  him  as  an  Eton  boy. 
We  used  to  goon  a  coach  belonging  to  some  friends,  and  one  year 
one  of  the  Parkers  bowled  three  of  the  Harrow  boys  running. 

As  Ch£rie  had  been  with  Lord  Macclesfield  in  the  Parker 
family  before  she  came  to  us,  and  as  this  boy,  Alex  Parker,  had 
either  been  or  nearly  been  one  of  her  pupils,  she  had  a  kind  of 
reflected  glory  from  the  event. 

Eton  was  always  surrounded  with  a  glamour  of  romance. 
John  had  rowed  stroke  in  the  Eton  eight,  and  when  Cecil  rose 
to  the  dignity  of  being  Captain  of  the  Oppidans  we  were 
proud  indeed.  One  summer  we  all  went  down  to  Eton  for 
the  4th  of  June. 

We  went  to  speeches  and  had  tea  in  Cecil's  room,  and  straw- 
berry messes,  and  walked  about  in  the  playing-fields  and  saw 
the  procession  of  boats  and  the  fireworks. 

From  that  day  I  was  filled  with  a  longing  to  go  to  Eton, 
and  resented  bitterly  having  to  go  to  a  private  school  first. 

Another  exciting  event  I  remember  was  a  visit  to  Windsor, 
to  the  Norman  Tower  in  Windsor  Castle,  where  my  uncle, 
Henry  Ponsonby,  and  my  Aunt  M'aim^e  lived.  This  happened 
one  year  in  the  autumn.  We  stayed  a  Sunday  there.  The 
house  was,  for  a  child,  fraught  with  romance  and  interest.  First 
of  all  there  were  the  prisons.  My  aunt  had  discovered  and  laid 
bare  the  stone  walls  of  two  octagonal  rooms  in  the  tower  which 
had  been  prisons  in  the  olden  times  for  State  prisoners,  and  she 
had  left  the  walls  bare.  There  were  on  them  inscriptions 
carved  by  the  prisoners.  She  had  made  these  two  rooms  her 
sitting-rooms,  and  they  were  full  of  books,  and  there  was  a 
carpenter's  bench  in  one  of  these  rooms,  with  a  glass  of  water  on 
it  ready  for  painting. 

Windsor  was  itself  exciting  enough,  but  I  think  what  struck 
me  most  then  was  the  toy  cupboard  of  the  boys,  Fritz,  Johnny, 
and  Arthur.  All  their  toys  were  arranged  in  tiers  in  a  little 
windowless  room,  a  tier  belonging  to  each  separate  boy,  and  in 
the  middle  of  each  beautiful  and  symmetrical  arrangement 
there  were  toys  representing  a  little  room  with  a  table  and  lamp 
on  it.  As  if  all  this  was  not  exciting  enough,  my  Con-in  Betty 
told  me  the  story  of  the  Corsican  Brothers. 

Before  I  went  to  school  my  father  had  to  go  to  Contr- 

5 


66  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

ville  to  take  the  waters.  My  father  and  mother  took  me  with 
them.  I  faintly  regretted  not  playing  a  solo  at  Mademoiselle 
Ida's  pnpils'  concert,  which  was  to  have  been  part  of  the  pro- 
gramme, but  otherwise  the  pleasure  and  excitement  at  going 
were  unmitigated.  We  started  for  Paris  in  July.  Bessie  Bulteel 
came  with  us,  and  we  stopped  a  night  in  Paris,  at  the  Hotel 
Bristol.  My  father  took  me  for  a  walk  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix, 
and  the  next  day  we  went  to  Contrexeville.  I  never  enjoyed 
anything  more  in  my  life  than  those  three  weeks  at  Contrexeville. 
There  were  shops  in  the  hotel  gardens  called  les  Gaieties,  where 
a  charming  old  lady,  called  Madame  Paillard,  with  her  daughter, 
Theresc,  sold  the  delicious  sweets  of  Nancy,  and  spoilt  me 
beyond  words.  The  grown-up  people  played  at  petite  chevaux  in 
the  evening,  and  as  I  was  not  allowed  to  join  in  that  game,  the 
lady  of  the  petits  chevaux,  Mademoiselle  Rose,  had  a  kind  of 
rehearsal  of  the  game  in  the  afternoon  at  half-price,  in  which 
only  I  and  the  actresses  of  the  Casino,  whom  I  made  great 
friends  with,  took  part.  My  special  friend  was  Mademoiselle 
Tusini  of  the  Eldorado  Paris  Music  Hall.     She  was  a  songstress. 

One  day  she  asked  me  to  beg  Madame  Aurele,  the  directrice  of 
the  Theatre,  to  let  her  sing  a  song  at  the  Casino  which  she  had 
not  been  allowed  to  sing,  and  which  was  called  "  Les  allumettes 
du  General."  Mademoiselle  Tusini  said  it  was  her  greatest 
success,  and  that  when  she  had  sung  it  at  Nancy,  nobody  knew 
where  to  look.  I  pleaded  her  cause  ;  but  Madame  Aurele  said, 
'  Un  jour  quand  il  n'y  aura  que  des  Messieurs,"  so  I  am  afraid 
the  song  can  hardly  have  been  quite  nice.  When  we  went  away, 
Mademoiselle  Tusini  gave  me  a  large  photograph  of  herself  in 
the  role  of  a  commere,  carrying  a  wand.  Cherie  was  slightly 
astonished  when  she  saw  it,  and  when  I  described  the  great 
beauty  and  the  wonderful  goodness  of  Mademoiselle  Tusini,  she 
was  not  as  enthusiastically  sympathetic  as  I  could  have  wished. 

There  were  a  great  many  French  children  at  ContrexeVille, 
and  I  was  allowed  to  join  in  their  games.  There  was  a  charming 
old  cure  who  I  made  friends  with  in  the  village,  and  his  church 
was  the  first  Catholic  church  I  ever  entered. 

My  mother  and  father  used  to  go  to  the  Casino  play  every 
night.  I  was  allowed  to  go  once  or  twice,  as  Mademoiselle  Tusini 
had  threatened  to  strike  if  I  left  Contrexeville  without  seeing 
her  act,  so  I  was  taken  to  Monsieur  Choufleury  restera  chez  lui,  a 
harmless  farce,  which  is,  I  believe,  often  acted  by  amateurs. 


MEMBLAND  67 

We  stayed  there  three  weeks,  and  I  left  in  sorrow  and  tears. 
We  went  on  for  a  Nachkur  to  a  place  in  the  Vosges  called 
Geradmer,  which  is  near  a  lake.  One  day  we  drove  to  a  place 
called  the  Schhtchl,  and  ^aw  the  stone  marking  the  frontier  into 
Alsace,  which  was,  of  course,  Germany.  It  was  suggested  that 
we  should  cross  over,  but  I,  mindful  of  Cherie,  refused  to  set 
foot  on  the  stolen  and  violated  territory. 

On  the  way  back  we  stayed  a  day  and  night  in  Paris,  and 
bought  presents  for  all  those  at  home.  In  the  evening  we  went 
to  the  Theatre  francais  and  saw  no  less  an  actor  than  Delaunay 
in  Musset's  play,  On  nc  badine  pas  avec  I' Amour.  Delaunay  had 
a  voice  like  silver,  and  his  diction  on  the  stage  was  incomparable. 
I  remember  Count  Benckendorff  once  saying  about  him  thai 
whereas  one  often  bewailed  the  failure  of  an  actor  to  look  the 
part  of  a  grand  seigneur,  when  one  saw  Delaunay  one  wished 
anyone  off  the  stage  could  be  half  as  distinguished  as  he  was  on 
the  stage. 

My  father  took  me  to  the  Louvre  and  showed  me  the  Mona 
Lisa  and  Watteau's  large  picture  of  a  Pierrot  :  "  Gilles  "  and 
the  Galerie  d'Apollon,  and  late  in  the  afternoon  we  drove  to 
the  Bois  de  Boulogne. 

Cherie  had  always  told  us  of  the  Magasin  du  Louvre,  where 
as  children  went  out  they  were  given,  as  George,  in  the  poem, 
when  he  had  been  as  good  as  gold,  an  immense  balloon.  This 
balloon  had  always  been  one  of  my  dreams,  and  we  went  there, 
and  the  reality  was  fully  up  to  all  expectations. 

We  bought  some  nonnettes  in  the  Rue  St.  Honore"  and  a  great 
many  toys  at  the  Paradis  des  Enfanis. 

The  next  time  I  went  to  Contrexeville  I  was  at  school.  I  wore 
an  Eton  jacket  and  a  top  hat  in  Paris ;  this  created  a  sensation. 
A  man  said  to  me  in  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  "  Monsieur  a  son  Gibus." 
I  also  remember  receiving  a  wonderful  welcome  in  the  Galeries. 
With  the  end  of  the  first  visit  to  Contrexeville  1  will  end 
this  chapter,  for  it  was  the  end  of  a  chapter  of  life,  the  happiest 
and  most  wonderful  chapter  of  all.  New  gates  were  opened  ; 
but  the  gate  on  the  fairyland  of  childhood  was  shut,  and  for 
ev.r  afterwards  one  could  only  look  through  the  bars,  but  n<  \  •  1 
more  be  a  free  and  lawful  citizen  of  that  enchanted  country, 
where  life  was  like  a  fairy-tale  thai  seemed  almost  t<  d  to  be 

true,  and  yet  so  endlessly  long  and  so  infinitely  happy  that  it 

seemed  as  if  it  must  last  for  cvn 


CHAPTER    V 
SCHOOL 

I  WENT  to  school  in  September  1884.  On  the  7th  of 
September  John  came  of  age,  and  we  had  a  large  party 
in  the  house  and  a  banquet  for  the  tenants  in  the  tennis 
court,  at  which  I  had  to  stand  up  on  a  chair  and  make  a  speech 
returning  thanks  for  the  younger  members  of  the  family.  I 
travelled  up  to  London  with  my  mother  and  Mr.  Walter  Durn- 
ford,  and  was  given  Frank  Fairleigh  to  read  in  the  train,  but  it 
was  too  grown-up  for  me,  and  I  only  pretended  to  read  it.  We 
stayed  a  night  in  Charles  Street.  I  was  given  a  brown  leather 
dispatch  case  with  my  name  stamped  on  it  and  a  framed  photo- 
graph of  my  father  and  mother  and  of  Membland,  and  a  good 
stock  of  writing-paper,  and  the  next  afternoon  we  started  for 
my  school,  which  was  near  Ascot.  I  didn't  cry  either  on 
leaving  Membland  or  at  any  moment  on  the  day  I  was  taken 
to  school. 

We  arrived  about  tea-time.  The  school  was  a  red  brick 
building  on  the  top  of  the  hill,  north  of  Ascot  Station,  and 
looking  towards  the  station,  situated  among  pine  trees.  The 
building  is  there  now  and  is  a  girls'  school.  We  were  shown  into 
a  drawing-room  where  the  Headmaster  and  his  wife  received 
us  with  a  dreadful  geniality.  There  was  a  small  aquarium 
in  the  room  with  some  goldfish  in  it.  The  furniture  was 
covered  with  black-and-yellow  cretonne,  and  there  were  some 
low  ebony  bookcases  and  a  great  many  knick-knacks.  Another 
parent  was  there  with  a  small  and  pale-looking  little  boy 
called  Arbuthnot,  who  was  the  picture  of  misery,  and  well 
he  might  look  miserable,  as  I  saw  at  a  glance  that  he  was 
wearing  a  made-up  sailor's  tie.  Two  days  later  the  machinery 
inside  this  tie  was  a  valuable  asset  in  another  boy's  collection. 
Conversation  was  kept  up  hectically  until  tea  was  over.  They 
talked  of  a  common  friend,  Lady  Sarah  Spencer.     "  What  a 

68 


SCHOOL  69 

charming  woman    he  is  !  "  said  the  Headm  H<w    ensible 

he  seemed  to  charm!     How  Lmperviou     to  .ill  amenities  he 

revealed  himself  to  !><'  later!    Then  my  mother  said  g l-bye 

to  him,  and  we  were  takm  upstairs  by  the  matron  to  see  my 
cubicle,  a  little  mom  with  pitch-pine  walls,  partitioned  oil  from 
the  next  cubicle  by  a  thin  wooden  partition  that  did  not  reach 
the  ceiling,  so  that  you  could  talk  to  the  boy  in  the  next  cubit  1. 
Boys  were  not  allowed  to  go  into  each  other's  cubicles.     We 
hung    my   solitary  picture   up,  and    my   mother    interviewed 
the  matron,  Mrs.  Otway,  in  her  room  and  gave  her  a  pound  as 
she  went  away  ;  then  we  went  out  into  the  garden  for  a  momenl 
My  mother  said  good-bye  to  me  and  left  me  alone.     I  wand' 
about  the  garden,  which  was  not  a  garden  but  grass  hill  leading 
down  to  a  cricket-field.     Half-way  down  the  hill  was  a  gym- 
nasium, and  a  high  wooden  erection  with  step-.     I  wondi 
what  it  was  for.     The  boys  had  not  yet  arrived.     Two  boys 
presently  appeared  on  the  scene  ;  they  looked  at  me,  but  t 
no  great   notice.     Then  after  a  little  time  one  of  them  ap- 
proached me,  holding  in  his  hand  a  small  pebble  surrounded  with 
cotton-wool,  and  asked  me  if  I  would  like  a  cuckoo's  egg.     I 
did  not  know  whether  I  was  supposed  to  pretend  that  I  thought 
it  was  a  real  egg  or  not.     It  was  so  unmistakably  a  stone.     I 
smiled  and  said  nothing.     Presently  a  Chinese  gong  sounded 
somewhere  out  of  doors.     The  two  boys  ran  into  the  house.     I 
followed  them.     On  the  ground  floor  of  the  house  there  was  a 
large  hall  with  a  table  running  down  it,  a  fireplace  at  one  end, 
ami  at  the  other  end  an  arch  opening  on  to  the  staircase  draped 
with    red   curtains  with  black  fleur-de-lys  stamped  on  them. 
There  were  windows  on  one  side  of  the  room  and  a  cupboard  with 
books  in  on  the  other.     This  hall  was  now  full  of  boys  talking 
and  laughing.     Nobody  took  the  slightest  notice  of  me.     They 
then  trooped  through  a  passage  into  the  dining-room,  a  large 
100m  with  tables  round  three  sides  of  it  and  a  small  square 
table  in  the  middle  where  the  Headmaster,  his  wife,  and  om 
the  other  masters  sat.     We  sat  down.     I  was  placed  nearly  at 
the  end  of  the  last  table.     More  boys — those  of  the  first  division, 
who  were  a  race  apart — came  in  from  another  door.     Then  the 
Headmaster  entered,  rapped  on  his  table  with  a  knife,  and  said 
grace.     We  had  tea  ;  large  thick  slabs  of  bread  and  butter,  with 
the  butter  spread  very  thinly  over  them. 

Soon  after  tea  we  went   to   bed,  and    I   dreamt    I    was    at 


70  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Mcmbland,  and  woke  up  to  find  I  was  in  a  strange  place.  The 
boy  in  the  cubicle  next  to  mine  was  called  Hope.  He  was 
in  the  second  division.  In  another  cubicle  opposite  to  mine 
there  was  a  boy  in  the  first  division  called  Worthington.  One 
could  talk  to  them,  and  they  were  both  of  them  friendly. 

The  next  morning  after  breakfast  I  was  placed  in  the  fourth 
division  for  Latin  and  English,  and  the  fourth  set  for  Mathe- 
matics and  French,  and  had  my  first  lesson  in  Mathematics. 
The  first  thing  the  master  did  was  to  take  a  high  three-legged 
stool  from  a  corner  and  exhibit  it  to  us.  It  had  a  very  narrow 
seat.  It  was  a  rickety  stool.  "  This,"  he  said,  "  is  the  stool  of 
penitence.  I  hope  none  of  you  will  have  to  stand  on  it."  Then 
some  figures  were  written  down  on  the  blackboard,  and  a  sum 
in  short  division  was  set,  which  I  at  once  got  wrong.  In  fact, 
I  couldn't  do  it  at  all.  The  master  came  and  sat  down  by  my 
side,  and  said  :  "  You're  trembling."  So  I  was.  He  corrected 
the  mistakes  and  went  on  to  something  else.  He  was  terrifying 
to  look  at,  I  thought,  but  perhaps  not  as  frightening  as  he 
appeared  to  be.  I  was  a  little  bit  reassured.  Later  in  the 
day  we  had  a  French  lesson.  To  my  surprise  I  saw  he  knew 
but  little  French,  and  read  out  the  first  page  of  the  elementary 
accidence,  pronouncing  the  French  words  as  though  they  were 
English  ones. 

After  luncheon,  we  played  prisoner's  base,  and  I  at  once 
realised  that  there  is  a  vast  difference  between  games  and  play. 
Play  is  played  for  fun,  but  games  are  deadly  serious,  and  you  do 
not  play  them  to  enjoy  yourselves.  Everyone  was  given  two 
blue  cards,  and  every  time  you  were  taken  prisoner  you  lost  a 
card.  If  you  lost  both  you  were  kicked  by  the  captain  of  the 
side,  who  said  we  were  a  pack  of  dummies.  The  first  week 
seemed  endlessly  long,  and  acute  homesickness  pervaded  every 
moment  of  it.  Waking  up  in  the  morning  was  the  worst 
moment.  Every  night  I  used  to  dream  I  was  back  at  home, 
every  morning  the  moment  of  waking  up  was  a  sharp  bewilder- 
ing shock.  Our  voices  were  tried,  and  I  was  put  in  the  chapel 
choir.  The  chapel  choir  had  special  privileges,  but  also  long 
half-hours  of  choir  practice. 

The  masters  laughed  at  me  mercilessly  for  my  pronunciation 
of  English.  I  don't  know  what  was  wrong  with  it,  except  that 
I  said  y  allow,  aint  for  aren't,  and  ant  for  aunt,  but  I  did  my 
best  to  get  out  of  this  as  soon  as  possible.    Apart  from  idiosyn- 


SCHOOL  71 

crasies  of  pronunciation,  my  voice  seemed  to  tin m  comic,  and 
they  used  t o  imitate  me  by  speaking  through  their  noses  when* 

ever  I  said  anything.     The  boys  at  first  entirely  ignored  one, 

simply  telling  one  to  shut  up  if  one  spoke,  but  the  boys  in  my 
own  division  soon  became  friendly,  especially  an  American 
boy  called  Hamilton  Fish  the  third.  He  was  the  fii>t  man  to 
be  killed  in  the  American-Spanish  War  in  Cuba.  There  was 
no  bullying.  One  boy,  although  he  was  in  the  first  division, 
was  charming.and  treated  one  like  a  grown-up  person.  This 
was  Basil  Blackwood.  Even  then  he  drew  pictures  which 
were  the  delight  of  his  friends.  Another  boy  who  v.  as  friendly 
was  Niall  Campbell.  Dreadful  legends  were  told  about 
Winston  Churchill,  who  had  been  taken  away  from  the 
school.  His  naughtiness  appeared  to  have  surpassed  any- 
thing. He  had  been  flogged  for  taking  sugar  from  the  pantry, 
and  so  far  from  being  penitent,  he  had  taken  the  Head- 
master's sacred  straw  hat  from  where  it  hung  over  the  door 
and  kicked  it  to  pieces.  His  sojourn  at  this  school  had  been 
one  long  feud  with  authority.  The  boys  did  not  seem  to 
sympathise  with  him.  Their  point  of  view  was  conventional 
and  priggish. 

Every  morning  there  was  a  short  service  in  the  pitch-pine 
school  chapel,  and  every  morning  an  interval  between  lessons 
called  the  hour,  in  which  the  boys  played  nondescript  games, 
chiefly  a  game  called  IT.  If  you  were  IT  you  had  to 
catch  someone  else,  and  then  he  became  IT.  On  Sunday 
afternoon  we  went  for  a  walk.  On  Sunday  evening  the  Head- 
master read  out  a  book  called  The  Last  Abbot  of  Glastonbury, 
which  I  revelled  in.  After  the  first  week  I  had  got  more  or  less 
used  to  my  new  life.  In  a  fortnight's  time  I  was  quite  happy 
and  enjoying  myself;  but  every  now  and  then  life  was  marred 
and  made  hideous  for  the  time  being  by  sudden  and  unexpected 
dramas.  The  first  drama  was  that  of  the  Spanish  chestnuts. 
There  were  some  Spanish  chestnuts  lying  about  in  the  garden. 
We  were  told  not  to  cat  these.  Some  of  the  boys  did  tat 
them,  and  one  boy  gave  me  a  piece  of  something  to  eat  on  the 
end  of  a  knife.  It  was  no  bigger  than  a  crumb,  and  it  turned 
out  afterwards  to  be  a  bit  of  Spanish  chestnut,  or  at  Least  I 
thought  it  might  have  been.  One  afternoon  at  tea  the  Head 
rapped  on  his  table  with  his  knife.  There  was  a  dead  silence. 
"  All  boys  who  have  eaten  Spanish  chestnuts  are  to  stand  up." 


72  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Nobody  stood  up,  and  there  was  a  long  pause.  I  think  the 
boys  were  puzzled,  and  did  not  know  they  had  been  eating 
Spanish  chestnuts.  I  certainly  did  not  know  a  Spanish  chestnut 
by  sight.  I  had  no  chestnut  on  my  conscience.  After  a  very 
long  pause  the  Headmaster  made  some  rather  facetious  remarks, 
which  I  thought  were  meant  to  encourage  us,  but  the  other 
boys,  knowing  him  better,  knew  that  they  were  ironical  and 
portended  dreadful  things.  One  boy  stood  up.  Then,  after  a 
slight  pause,  another  ;  about  four  or  five  boys  followed  suit.  I 
suddenly  remembered  the  incident  of  the  penknife  in  the 
gymnasium  three  days  before.  Could  it  have  been  that  I  had 
eaten  a  Spanish  chestnut  ?  Was  that  little  bit  of  white  crumb 
on  the  end  of  the  knife  a  part  of  a  Spanish  chestnut  ?  I  had 
not  seen  a  whole  Spanish  chestnut  anywhere.  In  any  case  I 
had  better  be  on  the  safe  side,  and  I  stood  up.  The  Headmaster 
made  a  cutting  comment  on  boys  who  were  so  slow  to  own  up. 
A  few  more  stood  up,  and  that  was  all.  The  Head  then  delivered 
a  serious  homily.  We  had  been  guilty  of  three  things  :  greed, 
disobedience,  and  deceit.  We  would  all  do  two  hours'  extra 
work  on  a  half-holiday. 

There  was  electric  light  in  the  school,  and  the  electric  light 
was  oddly  enough  supposed  to  be  under  the  charge  of  one 
of  the  boys,  who  was  called  the  Head  Engineer.  Clever  and 
precocious  as  this  boy  was,  I  cannot  now  believe  that  his  office 
was  a  serious  one,  although  we  took  it  seriously  indeed  at 
the  time.  However  that  may  be,  nobody  except  this  boy  was 
allowed  to  go  into  the  engine-shed  or  to  have  anything  to 
do  with  the  electric  light.  We  were  especially  forbidden  to 
touch  any  of  the  switches  in  the  house  or  ever  to  turn  on  or 
off  the  electric  light  ourselves.  Electric  light  in  houses  at 
that  time  was  a  new  thing,  and  few  private  houses  were 
lighted  with  it.  One  day  one  of  the  boys  was  visited  by  his 
parents,  and  he  could  not  resist  turning  on  the  electric  light 
in  one  of  the  rooms  to  show  them  what  it  was  like.  Unfortun- 
ately the  Head  saw  him  do  this  through  the  window,  and 
directly  his  parents  were  gone  the  boy  was  flogged.  Every 
week  the  school  newspaper  appeared.  It  was  edited  by  two 
of  the  boys  in  the  first  division,  and  handed  round  to  the 
boys  at  tea-time.  This  was  a  trying  and  painful  moment  for 
some  of  the  boys,  as  there  were  often  in  this  newspaper 
scathing  articles  on  the  cricket  or  football  play  of  some  of 


SCHOOL  73 

the  boys  written  by  one  of  the  masters,  and  .ill  mentioning 
them  by  name;  and  as  parents  took  in  the  newspaper  it  was 
far  from  pleasant  to  be  pilloried  in  thi>  fashion.  Just  before 
half-term  another  drama  occurred.  I  was  doing  a  sum  in  short 
division,  and  another  boy  was  waiting  for  me  to  go  out.  i  l«  was 
impatient,  and  lie  said,  "  That's  right  ;  don't  you  sec  the  answei 
is  3456,"  or  whatever  it  was.  I  scribbled  it  down,  but  unfortun- 
ately had  left  a  mistake  in  the  working,  so  the  answer  was  right 
and  the  sum  was  partly  wrong.  This  was  at  once  detected, 
and  I  was  asked  if  I  had  had  any  help.  I  said  "  Yes,"  and  I 
was  then  accused  of  having  wanted  to  get  marks  by  unfair 
means,  and  of  having  cheated.  We  did  not  even  know  these 
particular  sums  received  marks.  The  Division  Master  bit 
his  knuckles,  and  said  he  would  report  the  matter  to  the  Head- 
master. When  I  went  into  chapel  from  the  vestry,  robed  in  a 
white  surplice,  he  pinned  a  piece  of  paper  with  cheat  on  it,  on 
to  my  back.  I  was  appalled,  but  as  nothing  happened  immedi- 
ately I  began  to  recover,  and  on  the  following  Sunday  when  we 
were  writing  home  the  master  told  me  I  could  put  in  my  Sunday 
letter  that  I  had  done  very  well,  and  that  I  was  his  favourite 
boy.  This  was  only  his  fun,  but  I  took  it  quite  seriously,  and  I 
did  not  put  it  in  my  letter,  because  I  thought  the  praise  excessive. 
On  Monday  morning  there  was  what  was  called  "  reading  over." 
The  boys  sat  in  the  hall,  grouped  in  their  divisions.  The  Head- 
master in  a  silk  gown  stood  up  at  a  high  desk,  the  three  under- 
masters  sat  in  a  semicircle  round  him,  also  in  gowns,  and  one 
division  after  another  went  and  stood  up  in  front  of  the  desk 
while  the  report  of  the  week's  work  was  read  out.  When  the 
fourth  division  went  up,  the  news  was  read  out  that  Duckworth 
and  Baring  had  been  guilty  of  a  conspiracy,  and  had  tried  to 
get  marks  by  unfair  means.  Duckworth  was  blamed  even 
more  severely  than  I  was,  being  an  older  boy. 

We  were  told  this  would  be  mentioned  in  our  report,  and 
that  if  anything  of  the  kind  occurred  again  we  would  be 
flogged.  When  this  was  over,  the  boys  turned  on  Duckworth 
and  myself  and  asked  us  how  we  could  have  done  such  a  base 
act.  We  were  shunned  like  two  cardsharpers,  and  it  took  us 
some  time  to  recover  our  normal  position.  The  half-term  rcj>ort 
was  about  nothing  else,  ami  my  father  was  dreadfully  uj>>ct. 
My  mother  came  down  to  see  me,  and  I  told  her  the  whole 
story,  and  I  think  she  understood  what  had  happened.     I  got 


74  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

through  the  rest  of  the  term  without  any  fresh  dramas,  and  did 
well  in  trials  at  the  end  of  the  term. 

One  day  my  sister  Susan  unwittingly  caused  me  annoyance 
by  writing  to  me  and  sealing  the  letter  with  her  name,  Susan. 
The  boys  saw  the  seal  and  called  out,  "  He's  got  a  sister  called 
Susan  ;  he's  got  a  sister  called  Susan."  Sisters  should  be 
warned  never  to  let  their  Christian  names  come  to  the  know- 
ledge of  their  brother's  schoolfellows.  This  kind  of  thing  is 
typical  of  private-school  life.  The  boys  were  childish  and  con- 
ventional, but  they  did  not  bully.  It  was  the  masters  who 
every  now  and  then  made  life  a  misery.  In  spite  of  everything, 
the  boys  were  happy — in  any  case,  they  thought  that  was 
happiness,  as  they  knew  no  better. 

In  the  afternoons  we  played  Rugby  football,  an  experience 
which  was  in  my  case  exactly  what  Max  Beerbohm  describes  it 
in  one  of  his  Essays  :  running  about  on  the  edge  of  a  muddy 
field.  The  second  division  master  pursued  the  players  with 
exhortations  and  imprecations,  and  every  now  and  then 
a  good  kicking  was  administered  to  the  less  successful  and 
energetic  players,  which  there  were  quite  a  number  of.  The 
three  best  Rugby  football  players  were  allowed  to  wear  on  Sun- 
days a  light  blue  velvet  cap  with  a  silver  Maltese  cross  on  it, 
and  a  silver  tassel.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  this  cap  was  not 
always  given  to  the  best  players.  It  was  given  to  the  boys  the 
Headmaster  liked  best.  What  I  enjoyed  most  were  the  readings 
out  by  the  Headmaster,  which  happened  on  Sunday  afternoons 
and  sometimes  on  ordinary  evenings.  He  read  out  several 
excellent  books  :  The  Moonstone,  the  Leavenworth  Case,  a  lot  of 
Pickwick,  and,  during  my  first  term,  Treasure  Island.  The  little 
events,  the  rages  for  stamp  collecting  and  swopping,  stag-beetle 
races,  aquariums,  secret  alphabets,  chess  tournaments,  that 
make  up  the  interests  of  a  boy's  everyday  life  outside  his  work 
and  his  play,  delighted  me.  I  was  a  born  collector  but  a  bad 
swopper,  and  made  ludicrous  bargains.  I  made  great  friends 
with  a  new  boy  called  Ferguson,  and  taught  him  how  to  play 
Spankaboo.  We  never  told  anyone,  and  the  secret  was  never 
discovered.  We  used  to  find  food  for  the  game  in  bound  copies 
of  the  Illustrated  London  News.  We  had  drawing  lessons  and 
music  lessons,  and  I  was  delighted  to  find  that  my  first  school 
piece  was  a  gigue  by  Corelli  that  I  had  heard  my  mother  play 
at  the  concert  at  Stafford  House,  which  I  have  already  described. 


SCHOOL  75 

At  the  end  of  the  term  came  the  <  hool  i  om  ert,  foi  whii  li  1 1  •  ♦  n 
were  many  rehearsals.  I  cli<  1  not  take  any  part  in  it,  except 
in  the  choru  ,  who  sang  "Adeste  Fideles"  in  Latin  at  the 

cud  of  it. 

Some  scenes  were  acted  from  the  Bourgeois  GentUhomme, 
the  same  scenes  we  had  acted  at  Membland,  but  I  took  no 
part  in  them.     Then  came  the  unutterable  joy  of  going  heme  for 

the  holidays,  which  were  spent  at  Membland.  When  I  arrived 
and  had  my  first  schoolroom  tea  I  was  rather  rough  with  the 
toast,  and  Chcric  said  :  "  Est-ce  la  les  manieres  d'Ascot  ?  '  At 
the  end  of  the  holidays  I  spent  a  few  days  in  London,  and 
was  taken  to  the  play,  and  enjoyed  other  dissipations  which 
made  me  a  day  or  two  late  in  going  back  to  school.  The 
holiday  task  was  Bulwer  Lytton's  Harold,  which  my  mother 
lead  out  to  me.  As  soon  as  I  arrived  at  school  I  was  given 
the  holiday-task  paper  and  won  the  prize,  a  book  called  Half- 
hours  in  the  Far  South,  which  I  have  never  read,  but  which  I 
still  possess  and  respect. 

During  the  Lent  term  we  had  athletic  sports  :  long  jump, 
high  jump,  hurdle,  flat  and  obstacle  races.  I  won  a  heat  in  a 
hurdle  race  and  nearly  got  a  place  in  the  final,  the  only  approach 
to  an  athletic  achievement  in  the  whole  of  my  life.  A  curious 
drama  happened  during  this  term.  A  boy  called  Phillimore 
was  the  chief  actor  in  it.  He  was  in  the  first  division.  One  day 
the  Headmaster  went  up  to  London.  During  his  absence  a 
message  was  sent  round  in  his  name  by  one  of  the  under- 
masters.  The  message  was  brought  by  one  of  the  boys 
to  the  various  divisions.  It  was  to  the  effect  that  we  were 
allowed  or  not  allowed  to  do  some  specific  thing.  When  the 
boy,  who  was  new  and  inexperienced,  brought  the  message  into 
the  first  division,  Phillimore  said  to  him,  "Ask  Mr.  So-and-so 
with  my  compliments  whether  the  message  is  genuine."  '  Do 
you  really  want  me  to  ask  him  ?  "  asked  the  boy.  "  Yes,  of 
course,"  said  Phillimore.  The  little  boy  went  back  to  the 
master,  who  happened  to  be  the  severest  of  all  the  masters, 
and  said:  "  Phillimore  wants  to  know  whether  the  message  is 
genuine."  A-  soon  as  the  Headmaster  returned  the  whole 
school  was  summoned,  and  the  Headmaster  in  his  black  gOWTJ 
told  ns  the  dreadful  story  of  Phillimore 's  unheard-of  act. 
Phillimore  was  had  up  in  front  of  the  whole  school,  and  told 
to  explain  his  conduct.      He  said   it  was  a    joke,   and  that   he 


76  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

had  never  dreamt  that  the  boy  would  deliver  the  message. 
The  explanation  was  not  accepted,  and  Phillimore  was  stripped 
of  his  first  division  privileges.  The  privileges  of  the  first 
division  were  various  :  they  were  allowed  to  dig  in  a  place 
called  the  wilderness,  which  was  a  sand-heap  through  which 
ran  a  light  truck  railway  without  an  engine.  They  went  on 
special  expeditions. 

These  expeditions  need  an  explanation.  Sometimes  they 
consisted  merely  of  walks  to  Bagshot  or  Virginia  Water,  and 
perhaps  a  picnic  tea.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  the  first 
division  expeditions  or  the  choir  expedition,  they  were  far  more 
elaborate,  and  consisted  of  a  journey  to  London  with  sight- 
seeing, or  to  places  as  far  off  as  Bath  and  the  Isle  of  Wight. 

During  my  first  term  the  choir  went  to  Swindon  to  see  the 
Great  Western  Works,  to  Reading  to  see  the  Biscuit  Factory, 
and  to  Bath  in  one  day,  and  we  got  home  late  in  the  night. 
During  my  second  term  we  spent  a  day  in  London  inspecting 
the  Tower,  the  Mint,  and  other  sights,  and  had  tea  at  the  house 
of  one  of  the  boys'  parents,  Colonel  Broadwood,  who  lived  in 
Eccleston  Square. 

These  expeditions  were  recorded  in  the  school  Gazette, 
and  when  my  mother  heard  of  our  having  had  tea  with  Colonel 
Broadwood,  she  said  :  "  Why  should  not  the  choir,  next  time  they 
came  to  London,  have  luncheon  at  Charles  Street  ?  "  The  idea 
made  me  shudder,  although  I  said  nothing.  The  idea  of  having 
one's  school  life  suddenly  brought  into  one's  home  life,  to  see 
the  Headmaster  sitting  down  to  luncheon  in  one's  home,  seemed 
to  me  altogether  intolerable.  My  mother  thought  I  would  per- 
haps be  ashamed  of  the  food  for  not  being  good  enough,  and  said  : 
"  If  we  had  a  very  good  luncheon."  But  that  wasn't  the 
reason.  It  never  happened.  Anything  more  miserable  than 
the  appearance  of  Broadwood  when  we  had  tea  in  his  father's 
house  cannot  be  imagined. 

Nothing  was  more  strange  at  this  school  than  the  sudden 
way  in  which  either  a  treat  or  a  punishment  descended  on  the 
school.  The  treats,  too,  were  of  such  a  curious  kind,  and  in- 
volved so  much  travelling.  Sometimes  the  first  division  would 
be  taken  up  en  masse  to  a  matinee.  Sometimes  they  would  be 
away  for  nearly  twenty-four  hours.  The  punishments  were 
equally  unexpected  and  curious.  One  boy  was  suddenly 
flogged  for  cutting  off  a  piece  of  his  hair  and  keeping  the  piece 


SCHOOL  77 

in  his  drawer.  In  the  second  division  the  boys  were  punished 
by  electricity.  The  division  was  made  to  join  hand-,  and  a 
strong  electric  shock  was  passed  through  it.  This  went  on 
until  one  day  one  boy,  smarting  from  an  overcharge  of  electricity, 
took  the  battery  and  threw  it  at  the  master's  head,  inflicting  a 
sharp  wound.  Nothing  was  said  about  this  action,  to  the 
immense  astonishment  of  the  boys,  who  thought  it  jolly  of 
him  not  to  sneak. 

We  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  complete  uncertainty.  We 
never  knew  if  some  quite  harmless  art  ion  would  not  be  con- 
strued into  a  mortal  offence.  Any  criticism,  explicit  or  implicit, 
<tf  the  food  was  considered  the  greatest  of  crimes.  The  food 
was  good,  and  the  boys  had  nothing  to  complain  of,  nor  did 
tiny,  but  they  were  sometimes  punished  for  looking  as  if  they 
didn't  like  the  cottage  pie. 

One  day  I  heard  a  boy  use  the  expression  "  mighty  good." 
The  next  day  I  said  at  breakfast  that  the  porridge  was  mightv 
good.  The  master  overheard  me  and  asked  me  what  I  said.  I 
answered,  "  I  said  the  porridge  was  very  good."  "  No,"  said 
the  master,  "  that  is  not  exactly  what  you  said."  I  then 
admitted  to  the  use  of  the  word  mighty.  This  was  thought 
to  be  ironical,  and  I  was  stopped  talking  at  meals  for  a  week. 

Another  time  a  message  was  passed  up  to  me  to  stop  talking 
at  luncheon.  This  was  frequently  done  ;  a  message  used  to  be 
passed  up  saying :  "  Baring  and  Bell  stop  talking,"  but  some- 
times the  boys  used  to  be  inattentive,  and  if  one  sat  far  up 
table  the  message  had  a  way  of  getting  lost  on  the  way.  This 
happened  to  me.  I  was  stopped  talking  and  the  message 
never  reached  me,  and  I  went  on  talking  gaily.  Afterwards 
the  master  sent  for  me  and  said,  "You'll  find  yourself  in 
Queer  Street."  I  was  not  allowed  to  remonstrate.  I  didn't 
even  know  what  I  was  accused  of  at  the  time,  and  I  was 
stopped  talking  for  a  week. 

The  Headmaster  was  a  virulent  politician  and  a  fanatical 
[ory,  On  the  5th  of  November  an  effigy  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
used  to  be  burnt  in  the  grounds,  and  there  was  a  little  note 
in  the  Gazette  to  say  there  were  only  seven  Liberals  in  the 
school,  the  li  '-1  of  whom  was  myself.  The  Gazette  went  on  to 
add  t I1.1t  "  needless  to  say,  the  school  were  supporters  of  tin- 
Church  and  the  State."  Qne  day  somebody  rashly  sent  the 
Head  a  Libera]  circular.     He  sent  it  back  with  some  coppers 


78  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

inside,  so  that  the  recipient  should  have  to  pay  eightpence  on 
receipt  of  it,  and  the  whole  school  was  told  of  his  action.  One 
day  there  was  a  by-election  going  on  hard-by.  All  the  school 
were  taken  with  blue  ribbons  on  their  jackets  except  the  un- 
fortunate seven  Liberals,  who  were  told  to  stay  at  home  and 
work. 

One  year  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  was  burnt  in  effigy,  as 
he  was  then  a  Radical,  and  the  effigy  held  in  its  hands  a 
large  cardboard  cow  with  three  acres  written  on  it.  It  was  a 
bad  time  for  the  Liberals,  as  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Liberal 
Government  was  at  that  time  particularly  weak,  and  it  was 
impossible  to  defend  Mr.  Gladstone's  Egyptian  policy,  still  less 
Lord  Granville.  So  the  Head  smiled  in  triumph  over  the 
renegades,  one  of  whom  I  am  glad  to  say  was  Basil  Blackwood. 
He  took  the  matter  very  calmly  and  drew  offensive  caricatures 
of  the  Conservative  politicians. 

During  the  summer  the  rage  the  boys   had  for  keeping 

caterpillars  in   breeding  cages,  for  collecting  butterflies,  and 

keeping  live  stock  was  allowed  full  play.     The  Head  himself  had 

supplies  of  live  animals  brought  to  the  school,  among  which 

were  salamanders  and  Italian  snakes.     I  myself  invested  in  a 

green  lizard,  which  although  it  had  no  tail,  was  in  other  respects 

satisfactory,  and  ate,  so  a  letter  of  mine  of  that  date  says,  a  lot 

of  worms.     I  also  had  a  large,  fat  toad,  which  was  blind  in  one 

eye,  but  for  a  toad,  affectionate.     But  the  ideal  of  the  boys  was 

to  possess  a  Natterjack  toad,  whatever  that  may  mean  or  be. 

We  were  allowed  to  go  out  on  the  heath  during  the  summer 

and  catch  small  lizards  and  butterflies,  and  altogether  natural 

history  was  encouraged ;  so  was  gardening.     Boys  who  wished 

to  do  so  might  have  a  garden,  and  a  prize  was  offered  for  the 

garden  which  was  the  prettiest  and  the  best  kept  throughout 

the  summer  term.     I  won  that  prize.     My  garden  contained 

four  rose  trees,  several  geraniums,  some  cherry  pie,  and  a  border 

of  lobelias.     It  was  a  conventional  garden,  but  there  was  a 

professional  touch  about  it,  and  I  tended  it  with  infinite  care. 

The  prize  was  a  ball  of  string  in  an  apple  made  of  Lebanon 

wood.     Sometimes  we  were  allowed  into  the  strawberry  beds, 

and   could   eat   as   many  strawberries    as   we  liked.     During 

this  term   I  made  great   friends  with  Broadwood.     We  were 

both    in    the    third    division,   and    decided    that    we    would 

write  a  pantomime  together  some  day.     One  day  we  were 


SCHOOL  79 

looking  on  at  a  cricket  match  which  was  being  played  against 
another  school.  I  have  told  what  happened  in  detail  else- 
where in  the  form  of  a  story,  but  the  sad  bare  facts  were  these. 
The  school  was  getting  beaten,  the  day  was  hot,  the  match  was 
long  and  tedious,  and  Broadwood  and  another  boy  called  Bell 
and  myself  wandered  away  from  the  match  ;  two  of  us  climbed 
up  the  wooden  platform,  which  was  used  for  letting  off  fireworks 
on  the  5th  of  November.  Bell  remained  below,  and  we  threw 
horse-chestnuts  at  him,  which  he  caught  in  his  mouth.  Pre- 
sently one  of  the  masters  advanced  towards  us,  biting  his 
knuckles,  which  he  did  when  he  was  in  a  great  rage,  and 
glowered.  He  ordered  us  indoors,  and  gave  us  two  hours'  work 
to  do  in  the  third  division  schoolroom.  We  went  in  as  happy 
as  larks,  and  glad  to  be  in  the  cool.  But  at  tea  we  saw  there 
was  something  seriously  amiss.  The  rival  eleven  who  had  beaten 
us  were  present,  but  not  a  word  was  spoken.  There  was  an 
atmosphere  of  impending  doom  over  the  school  charged  with 
the  thunder  of  a  coming  row.  After  tea,  when  the  guests  had 
gone,  the  school  was  summoned  into  the  hall,  and  the  Head, 
gowned  and  frowning,  addressed  us,  and  accused  the  whole 
school  in  general,  and  Broadwood,  Bell,  and  myself  in  par- 
ticular, of  want  of  patriotism,  bad  manners,  inattention,  and 
vulgarity.  He  was  disgusted,  he  said,  with  the  behaviour  of 
the  school  before  strangers.  We  were  especially  guilty,  but 
the  whole  school  had  shown  want  of  attention,  and  gross 
callousness  and  indifference  to  the  cricket  match  (which  was 
all  too  true),  and  consequently  had  tarnished  the  honour  of  the 
school.  There  was  to  have  been  an  expedition  to  the  New 
Forest  next  week.  That  expedition  would  not  come  off ;  in  fact, 
it  would  never  come  off ;  and  the  speech  ended  and  the  school 
trooped  out  in  gloomy  silence  and  broke  up  into  furtive 
whispering  groups.  That  night  in  my  cubicle  I  said  to 
Worthington  that  I  thought  Campbell  minor,  who  had  been 
scoring  during  the  match,  had  certainly  behaved  will  all 
day,  and  didn't  he  deserve  to  go  to  the  New  Forest  ?  "  No," 
said  Worthington  ;  "  he  whistled  twice."  "  Oh,"  I  said,  "then 
of  course  he  can't  go." 

But  the  choir  had  an  expedition  that  term,  nevertheless. 
We  went  to  Shanklin  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  where  we  bathed  in 
the  sea  and  got  bark  after  midnight. 

My  mother  took  my  sister  Elizabeth  to  the  A<e<>t    ra 


80  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

that  year.  Elizabeth  was  just  out,  and  they  came  and  fetched 
me  and  took  me  too,  as  boys  were  allowed  to  go  to  the  races.  A 
little  later  another  drama  happened,  in  which  I  was  unwillingly 
to  play  the  chief  part.  We  were  all  playing  on  the  heath  one 
morning,  and  I  had  just  found  a  lizard  and  was  utterly  absorbed 
in  this  find  when  I  got  a  summons  that  I  was  wanted  by 
the  Head.  I  found  the  Head  in  the  Masters'  Common  Room 
enjoying  a  little  collation.  It  was  half-past  ten.  "  A  telegram 
has  come,"  said  the  Head,  "  that  you  have  been  especially  in- 
vited to  a  children's  garden-party  at  Marlborough  House  by  the 
Princess  of  Wales,  and  you  are  to  go  up  to  London  at  once. 
Are  you,"  said  the  Head  ironically,  "  a  special  friend  of  the 
Princess  of  Wales  ?  "  Half  excited,  half  fearful,  and  not 
without  forebodings,  I  changed  into  my  best  clothes,  and  ran 
off  to  catch  the  train.  I  was  to  come  back  that  evening.  I 
arrived  in  time  for  luncheon,  and  after  luncheon  went  to  the 
garden-party  with  Hugo,  where  we  spent  a  riotous  afternoon. 
There  were  performing  dogs  and  many  games.  My  father  was 
not  there.  He  was  in  Devonshire.  When  we  got  home  it  was 
found  that  I  had  missed  the  train  I  was  supposed  to  go  back  by, 
and  my  mother  thought  I  had  better  stay  the  night.  She  sent 
off  a  telegram  to  the  Head,  and  asked  if  I  might  do  so.  I 
thought  this  was  a  rash  act.  The  answer  came  back  just  before 
dinner  that  if  I  did  not  come  back  that  night  I  was  not  to  come 
back  at  all.  Everyone  was  distraught.  There  was  only  one 
more  train,  which  did  not  get  to  Ascot  till  half-past  twelve. 

My  mother  was  incensed  with  the  Headmaster,  and  said  if 
my  father  was  there  she  knew  he  would  not  let  me  go  back.  I 
remained  neutral  in  the  general  discussion  and  absolutely 
passive,  while  my  fate  hung  in  the  balance,  but  I  wanted  to  go 
back,  on  the  whole.  Both  courses  seemed  quite  appalling  :  to 
go  back  after  such  an  adventure,  or  not  to  go,  and  face  a  new 
school.  At  first  it  was  settled  that  on  no  account  should  I  go, 
but  finally  it  was  settled  that  I  should  go.  D.  took  me.  We 
arrived  late.  There  were  no  flys  at  the  station  and  we  had 
to  walk  to  the  school.  We  did  not  get  there  till  half-past  one  in 
the  morning.  D.  said  she  would  sleep  at  the  hotel,  but  the 
matron  who  opened  the  door  for  us  insisted  on  giving  her  a  bed- 
room. The  next  morning  I  got  up  at  half-past  six  to  practise 
the  pianoforte,  as  usual,  and  D.  looked  into  the  room  and  said 
good-bye,  and  then  I  felt  I  had  to  begin  to  live  down  this  appal- 


SCHOOL  81 

ling  episode.     Bttt  to  my  surprise  it  was  not  alluded  to.    The 

truth  being,  as  I  afterwards  found  out,  that  not  only  my  fathei 
and  mother,  but  Dr.  Wane  of  Eton,  had  written  to  the  Head- 
master to  tell  him  he  had  behaved  foolishly,  and  shortly  after- 
wards, to  make  amends,  I  was  sent  up  to  London  to  the  dentist. 
But  oh,  parents,  dear  parents,  if  you  only  knew  what  stress  of 
mind  such  episodes  involve,  you  would  not  insist  on  such 
favours,  nor  ever  forward  invitations  of  that  kind,  not  even  at 
the  bidding  of  the  King. 

D.  paid  me  one  other  visit  while  I  was  at  Ascot,  and 
brought  with  her  a  large  bunch  of  white  grapes  from  Sheppy. 
We  were  not  allowed  hampers,  nor  were  we  allowed  to  eat  any 
food  brought  by  strangers  or  relations  in  the  house,  and  when  I 
saw  that  bunch  of  white  grapes  I  was  terrorstruck.  I  made 
D.  hide  it  at  once.  I  was  afraid  that  even  its  transient  presence 
in  the  house  might  be  discovered,  nor  did  I  eat  one  grape. 

I  cannot  remember  that  summer  holiday,  unless  it  was  that 
summer  we  went  to  Contrcxeville  for  the  second  time,  but 
when  I  went  back  to  school  in  September,  Hugo  went  with 
me  and  we  shared  the  same   room.      Games  of   Spankaboo 
went    on    every   night.     During  all   my  schooltime  at   As 
I   have   already  said  that   I  was   never   once   bullied  by  the 
boys,  but  I  never  seemed  to  do  right  either  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Headmaster   or   of  the   Second   Division   master.     The    two 
other   masters   were   friendly.     These   two   masters,  we    were 
one  day  informed,  intended  to  leave  the  school  and  set  up  a 
school  of  their  own  at  Eastbourne.     They  were  both  of  tin  in 
friendly  to  Hugo  and  myself.     The  school  was  to  subscribe  and 
give  them  a  bacon  dish  in  Sheffield  plate  as  a  parting  gift.     One 
day  I  wrote  home  and  suggested  that  Hugo  and  I  should  go  to 
that   school.     I   did  not   think  this   request   would   be   taken 
seriously.     It  seemed  to  me  quite  fantastic — an  impossible,  wild 
fancy.     To  my  intense  surprise  no  answer  explaining  how  im- 
possible such  a  thing  was  arrived,  and  I  forget  what  happened 
next,  but   I  know  that   soon  the  two  departing  masters  dis- 
cussed the  matter  witli  me,  and  I  found  out  they  were  actually 
in  correspondeiio  with  my  mother.    The  remaining  masters  a 
to  scowl  at  us,  but  the  term  ended  calmly  and  we  left  the  <i.i\ 
before  the  end  of  the  term,  so  I  was  unable  to  play  in  the  treble 
in  a  piece  for  three  people  at  one  pianoforte  called  "  Marche 
Romaine,"  which  I  was  down  for  on  the  concert  programme,  the 
6 


82  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

second  time  I  missed  performing  at  a  concert  in  public,  and  the 
opportunity  of  a  lifetime  missed.  When  I  got  to  Membland  I 
found  it  was  settled  that  we  were  not  going  back  to  Ascot,  but 
to  the  new  school,  St.  Vincent's,  at  Eastbourne.  The  Head- 
master was  told,  and  he  at  first  accepted  the  matter  calmly, 
but  a  little  later  he  wrote  to  my  father  and  asked  him  what 
reasons  he  had  for  taking  his  sons  away  if  other  parents  asked 
him.  My  father  seldom  wrote  a  letter  of  more  than  one  page. 
But  on  that  occasion  he  wrote  a  letter  of  four  pages,  and  the 
Head  wrote  back  to  say  that  he  was  entirely  satisfied  with  his 
reasons.  My  mother  and  I  always  wondered  what  was  in  that 
letter.  My  father  when  asked  said :  "I  knew  what  the  man 
wanted  to  know,  and  I  told  him,"  but  we  never  knew  what 
that  was. 

In  January  Hugo  and  I  went  to  Eastbourne,  and  my  friend, 
Broadwood,  also  left  Ascot  and  followed  us.  There  were  only 
nine  boys  at  first.  But  the  next  term  there  were,  I  think, 
twenty,  then  thirty,  and  soon  the  school  became  almost  as  big 
as  the  Ascot  school,  where  there  were  forty  boys. 

Before  I  left  Eastbourne,  the  Headmaster  of  my  first  school 
died,  and  I  do  not  know  what  happened  to  the  school  after- 
wards. Several  of  the  Ascot  boys  came  to  Eastbourne  later, 
but  the  boys  at  Ascot  were  not  allowed  to  correspond  with  us. 
My  cousins,  Rowland  and  Windham  Baring,  arrived,  the  sons 
of  my  Uncle  Mina,  who  was  afterwards  Lord  Cromer. 

At  Eastbourne  a  new  life  began.  There  was  more  amuse- 
ment than  work  about  it,  and  everything  was  different.  We 
played  Soccer  with  another  school ;  we  went  to  the  swimming 
bath,  and  I  learnt  to  swim ;  to  a  gymnasium,  and  we  were  drilled 
by  a  volunteer  sergeant.  Broadwood  and  I  gave  theatrical  per- 
formances, one  of  which  represented  the  Headmaster's  menage 
at  our  first  school.  It  must  have  been  an  amusing  play  to  watch, 
as  the  point  of  it  was  that  the  Ascot  Headmaster  discovered  his 
wife  kissing  her  brother,  another  of  the  Ascot  masters,  the  villain, 
and  she  sang  a  song  composed  by  Broadwood  and  myself,  of 
which  the  refrain  was,  "  What  would  Herbert  say,  dear — what 
would  Herbert  say  ?  "  Herbert  being  the  Ascot  Headmaster. 
Herbert  then  broke  on  to  the  scene  and  gave  way  to  paroxysms 
of  jealous  rage.  Another  boy  who  came  to  this  school  was 
Pierre  de  Jaucourt,  the  son  of  Monsieur  de  Jaucourt,  a  great 
friend  of  my  father's.     Pierre  was  one  of  the  playfellows  of 


■  IIOOL  83 

my  childhood.     He  i< >< »k  part   in  the  <I1.u11.1tn    performances 
organised  by  Broadwood  and  nrj  'It  in  the  Boot  Room,  which 

became  more  and  more  ambitions,  and  in  one  play  the  Devil 
appeared  through  a  trap-door  in  a  cloud  of  fire. 

Broadwood  and  I  were  constantly  making  up  topical  duets 
modelled  on  those  of  Harry  Nicholls  and  Herbert  Campbell  in 
the  Drury  Lane  pantomime.  But  we  were  not  satisfied  with 
these  scratch  performances  in  the  Boot  Room,  although  we  had 
a  make-up  box  from  Clarkson,  and  wigs,  and  we  decided  to 
act  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  which  was  at  once  put  into  rehearsal. 
I  was  cast  for  the  part  of  Mr.  Hardcastle,  Hugo  for  that  of 
Miss  Hastings,  Broadwood  for  that  of  Marlowe,  Bell  for  that  of 
Miss  Hardcastle,  and  an  overgrown  boy  called  Pyke-Nott  for 
the  part  of  Tony  Lumpkin.  After  a  few  rehearsals  it  was 
settled  that  the  play  should  be  done  on  a  real  stage,  and  that 
parents  and  others  should  be  invited  to  witness  the  performance. 
Dresses  were  made  for  us  in  London,  scenery  was  painted  by 
Mr.  Shelton,  our  drawing-master,  and  my  father  and  mother 
came  down  to  see  the  play. 

Hugo  looked  a  vision  of  beauty  as  Miss  Hastings.  Pyke- 
Nott  was  annoyed  because  he  was  not  allowed  to  sing  a  song 
about  Fred  Archer  in  the  tavern  scene,  instead  of  the  real  song 
which  is  a  part  of  the  text.  It  was  thought  that  a  song  of  which 
the  refrain  was,  "  Archer,  Archer  up,"  would  be  an  anachronism. 

The  play  went  off  very  well,  and  Hugo  played  a  breakdown 
on  the  banjo  between  the  acts,  but  when  he  had  played  three 
bars  the  bridge  of  his  banjo  fell  with  a  crash,  and  the  solo  came 
to  an  end. 

We  kept  up  the  custom  of  going  expeditions,  not  long 
ones,  but  only  to  places  like  Pevensey  and  Hurstmonccux, 
which  were  quite  close.  We  also  went  out  riding  with  a  riding- 
master  on  the  Downs,  and  in  the  summer  we  sailed  in  sailing 
boats.  Altogether  it  was  an  ideal  school  life.  We  found  the 
work  easy,  and  we  all  seemed  to  get  quantities  of  prizes,  but  we 
Learnt  little.  Hugo  and  I  continued  to  play  Spankaboo  in  our 
room,  and  Hugo  would  do  anytliing  in  the  world  if  I  threatened 
to  refuse  to  play.  So  much  so,  that  one  of  the  masters  thought 
I  was  blackmailing  him,  ami  we  were  told  to  reveal  our  strange 
secret  at  once.  This  we  both  resolutely  refused  to  do,  pro- 
testing with  tears  that  it  was  a  private  matter  of  no  importance, 
and  there  the  matter  wa>  allowed  to  rest,  the  master  merely 


84  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

saying  that  if  he  ever  saw  any  signs  of  anything  subterranean 
going  on  we  should  be  punished. 

I  remember  one  curious  episode  happening.  One  of  the 
masters  found  a  letter  addressed  to  one  of  the  boys  written  to 
him  by  another  boy.  This  was  the  text  of  the  letter  :  "  Dear 
Mister  C, — May  I  have  my  sausage  next  Sunday  at  breakfast 
because  I  am  very  hungry." 

Mr.  C,  it  was  discovered,  had  been  regularly  levying  a  tribute 
from  his  neighbour  at  breakfast  for  some  weeks,  and  the  other 
boy,  a  much  smaller  boy,  had  had  to  go  without  his  sausage. 
Mr.  C.  was  severely  flogged  in  front  of  the  whole  school. 
Boys  who  went  to  Scotland  for  the  holidays  were  allowed  to 
leave  a  day  before  the  others,  and  as  we  had  an  all  day's  journey 
to  Devonshire,  we  shared  the  same  privilege  ;  so  did  Pierre  de 
Jaucourt,  who  went  to  France.  This  inspired  Broadwood  to 
make  the  following  lampoon,  which  was  good-naturedly  but 
insistently  chanted  by  the  rest  of  the  school  on  the  day  before 
we  went  away : 

'  The  Honourablcs  are  going  away  to-morrow, 
And  ten  to  one  the  Count  goes  too. 
We  poor  swinies  we  don't  go, 
We  poor  swinies  we  don't  go. 
The  Honourablcs  are  going  away  to-morrow, 
And  ten  to  one  the  Count  goes  too." 

When  we  went  home  for  the  holidays  for  the  first  time  from 
Eastbourne  the  train  stopped  at  Slough.  The  St.  Vincent's 
term  had  ended  a  few  days  before  the  Ascot  term,  and  there, 
on  the  platform  of  Slough  Station,  we  saw  the  Headmaster 
of  our  Ascot  school,  surrounded  by  the  first  division  and 
evidently  enjoying  a  first  division  expedition. 

"  Why  don't  you  put  your  head  out  and  say  how  do  you 
do  to  them  ?  "  said  my  mother,  but  Hugo  and  I  almost  hid 
under  the  seat,  and  we  lay  right  back  from  the  windows,  spell- 
bound, till  the  train  went  on. 

Broadwood  and  I  used  to  meet  in  the  holidays  in  London. 
Broadwood  used  to  say  to  his  parents  that  he  was  having 
luncheon  with  me  in  Charles  Street,  and  I  used  to  say  I  was 
having  luncheon  with  Broadwood  in  Eccleston  Square,  but 
what  really  happened  was  that  we  used  to  go  to  a  bun  shop, 
or  have  no  luncheon  at  all,  as  neither  of  us  would  be  seen  at 
luncheon  with  a  friend  in  each  other's  homes. 


SCHOOL  85 

Broadwood  said  that  his  mother  cross-questioned  him  about 
our  house,  and  that  he  gave  a  most  fantastic  account  of  our 
mode  of  life. 

While  we  were  at  school  at  Eastbourne  many  eventful 
things  happened  at  home.  In  the  summer  holidays  of  1886, 
Hugo  and  I  went  with  my  father  to  the  Cow<     Regatta. 

In  September  of  the  same  year  my  father,  Hugo,  and  myself 
went  for  a  long  cruise  in  the  Waierwilch.  We  started  from 
Membland  and  stopped  at  Falmouth,  and  Mounts  Hay,  and 
saw  over  St.  Michael's  Mount,  and  then  we  sailed  to  the  Scilly 
Isles,  where  we  spent  a  day  in  the  wonderful  garden  of  Tresco. 
At  that  time  of  year  the  sea  in  the  Scilly  Isles  was  as  blue  as  the 
Mediterranean,  especially  when  seen  through  the  fuschia  hedges 
and  the  almost  tropical  vegetation  of  the  Tresco  gardens.  We 
then  sailed  across  the  Irish  Channel  to  Bantry  Bay  and  up  the 
Kenmare  River  and  drove  in  an  Irish  car  right  across  the 
mountains  to  Killarney. 

Next  year  was  Jubilee  year.  Both  my  eldest  sisters  were 
married  that  year.  Hugo  and  I  attended  these  weddings  and 
the  Jubilee  procession  as  well,  which  we  saw  from  Bath  House, 
Piccadilly,  but  I  don't  remember  much  about  it,  except  the 
Queen's  bonnet,  which  had  diamonds  in  front  of  it,  and  the 
German  Crown  Prince  in  his  white  uniform,  but  I  remember  the 
aspect  of  London  before  and  after  the  Jubilee,  the  Venetian 
masts,  the  flags,  the  crowds,  the  carriages,  the  atmosphere 
of  festivity,  and  the  jokes  about  the  Jubilee. 

We  went  on  acting  a  French  play  every  year  at  Christmas, 
and  it  was  before  Margaret  was  married  that  we  had  our  greatest 
success  with  a  little  one-act  play  by  Dumas  fils  called  Commc 
Elles  sont  Tonics,  in  which  Margaret  and  Susan  did  the  chief 
parts  quite  admirably,  and  in  which  I  had  a  minor  part.     This 
was    performed    at    Christmas    1886.      After    Elizabeth    and 
Margaret  were  married,  Susan  and  I  and  Hugo  continued  to 
act,  and  we  did  three  plays  in  all  :    Les  Rives  dc  Marguerite 
(1887)  ;  La  Souris  (1888)  ;  I' Amour  de  I'Art  (by  Labiche)  (18S9). 
Another  home   excitement    was   the   building  of  an   organ 
in  the  house   in   Charles   Street.     It   was  by  way  of   being   a 
small  organ  at   first,  but  it  afterwards  expanded  into  quite  a 
respectable  size,  and  had  three  manuals.     Tin-  gave  me  a  mania 
for  everything  to  do  with  organs.     I  got  to  know  every  detail 
in  the  process  <>f  organ-building  and  every  device,  tubulai- 


86  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

pneumatic,  and  otherwise.  The  organ  we  had  at  Membland 
had  been  built  by  Mr.  Hele  of  Plymouth,  and  when  we  went 
back  to  Membland,  when  the  organ  was  being  built  in  London, 
my  mother  said  :  "  Don't  say  anything  to  Mr.  Hele  about  this, 
as  he  will  be  hurt  at  our  not  having  employed  him."  One  day 
Mr.  Hele  came  to  tune  the  organ,  and  I  disappeared  with  him, 
as  was  my  wont,  right  under  the  staircase  into  the  very  entrails 
of  the  organ  and  watched  him  at  his  work.  While  we  were 
there  in  the  darkness  and  the  confined  space,  I  confessed  to  him 
the  secret  that  we  were  having  an  organ  built  in  London. 
When  we  came  out  he  went  straight  to  my  mother  and  said  that 
Messrs.  Hele  would  have  been  only  too  glad  to  build  an  organ 
in  London.  When  my  mother  asked  me  how  I  could  have  told 
Mr.  Hele  we  were  having  an  organ  built  in  London,  I  said  I 
thought  that  as  we  were  right  inside  the  organ,  in  the  dark 
and  in  such  a  narrow  space,  that  it  wouldn't  matter,  and  that  he 
would  forget.  When  my  mother  told  Cherie  of  this  episode, 
Cherie  laughed  more  than  I  ever  saw  her  laugh,  and  I  couldn't 
understand  why  ;   I  was,  in  fact,  a  little  offended. 


CHAPTER    V  I 
ETON 

I    ENJOYED  Eton  from  the  first  moment  I  arrived.    The 
surprise  and  the  relief  at    finding  one  was  treated  lik<- 
a  grown-up  person,   that  nobody  minded  if  one   had  a 
sister  called  Susan  or  not,  that  all  the  ridiculous  petty  con- 
ventions of  private-school  life  counted  for  nothing,  were  in- 
expressibly great. 

Directly  I  arrived  I  was  taken  up  to  my  tutor  in  his  study, 
which  was  full  of  delightful  books.  lie  took  me  to  the  matron, 
Miss  Copeman,  whom  we  called  MeDame.  I  was  then  shown 
my  room,  a  tiny  room  on  the  second  floor  in  one  of  the  houses 
opposite  to  the  school-yard.  As  I  sat  in  my  room,  boy  after 
boy  strolled  in,  and  instead  of  asking  one  idiotic  questions 
they  carried  on  rational  conversation. 

The  next  day  I  met  Broadwood,  who  was  at  another  house, 
and  we  walked  up  to  Windsor  in  the  afternoon.  He  told  me 
all  the  things  I  had  better  know  at  once  ;  such  as  not  to  walk 
on  the  wrong  side  of  the  street  when  one  went  up  town  ;  never 
to  roll  up  an  umbrella  or  to  turn  down  the  collar  of  one's  great- 
coat ;  how  to  talk  to  the  masters  and  how  to  talk  of  them  ; 
what  shops  to  go  to,  and  what  were  the  sock-shops  that  no 
self-respecting  boy  went  to.  There  were  several  such  which  I 
never  entered  the  whole  time  I  was  at  Eton,  and  yet  I  suppose 
they  must  have  been  patronised  by  someone. 

The  day  after  that   came   the   entrance   examination,   in 

which  I  did  badly  indeed,  only  taking  Middle  Fourth.     My  tutor 

said  :   "You  have  been  taught  nothing  at  all."     I  was  in  the 

twenty-seventh  division — the  last   division  of  the  school   but 

three,  and  up  to  Mr.  Heygate.     I  was  in  the  French  division 

of  M.  Him,  who  directly  In-  put  me  on  to  read  saw  that  I  knew 

French,  a  fact  which  1  had  concealed  during  the  whole  time  I 

was  at  my  first  private    chool.     I  m<  sed  with   Milton  and 

87 


88  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Herbert  Scott,  and  after  the  first  fortnight  I  became  one  of 
the  two  fags  apportioned  to  Heywood-Lonsdale. 

The  captain  of  the  House  was  Charlie  Wood,  Lord  Halifax's 
eldest  son,  and  his  younger  brother,  Francis,  was  a  contemporary 
of  mine  and  in  the  same  house,  but  Francis,  who  was  the  most 
delightful  of  boys  and  the  source  and  centre  of  endless  fun,  died 
at  Eton  in  the  Lent  half  of  1889. 

Fagging  was  a  light  operation.  One  had  to  make  one's 
fagmaster  tea,  two  pieces  of  toast,  and  sometimes  boil  some 
eggs,  show  that  one's  hands  were  clean,  and  that  was  all.  Then 
one  was  free  to  cook  buttered  eggs  or  fry  sausages  for  one's 
own  tea. 

On  my  first  Sunday  at  Eton  I  had  breakfast  with  Arthur 
Ponsonby,  who  was  at  Cornish's,  and  I  was  invited  to  luncheon 
at  Norman  Tower,  Windsor,  where  the  Ponsonbys  lived.  There 
I  found  my  Uncle  Henry,  my  Aunt  M'aim^e,  my  cousins,  Betty 
and  Maggie  and  Johnny,  and  the  Mildmay  boys,  who  were  also 
at  Eton  then. 

In  the  afternoon  we  went  for  a  walk  in  the  private  grounds 
of  the  Home  Park  with  Johnny,  and  he  took  us  to  a  grotto  called 
the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta,  which  was  supposed  to  represent 
the  exact  dimensions  of  that  infamous  prison.  It  had  a  small, 
thick,  glazed  glass  window  at  the  top  of  it.  On  the  floor  was  a 
heap  of  stones.  Johnny  suggested  our  throwing  stones  at  the 
window,  and  soon  a  spirited  stone-throwing  competition  began. 
The  window  was  already  partly  shattered  when  warning  was 
given  that  someone  was  coming.  We  thought  it  might  be 
the  Queen,  and  we  darted  out  of  the  grotto  and  ran  for  our 
lives. 

The  whole  of  my  Eton  life  was  starred  with  these  Sundays 
at  the  Norman  Tower,  which  I  looked  forward  to  during  the 
whole  week.  Maggie  would  take  us  sometimes  into  the  Library 
and  the  State  Rooms,  and  we  used  sometimes  to  hear  the  ap- 
proaching footsteps  of  some  of  the  Royal  Family,  and  race  for 
our  life  through  the  empty  rooms. 

One  day  we  came  upon  the  Empress  Frederick,  who  was 
quietly  enjoying  the  pictures  by  herself. 

Sometimes  in  the  afternoon  Betty  would  take  me  up  to  her 
room  and  read  out  books  to  me,  but  that  was  later. 

Our  house  played  football  with  Evans',  Radcliffe's,  and 
Ainger's.     We  had  to  play  four  times  a  week,  and  though  I  was 


ETON  89 

always  a  useless  football  player,  I  thoroughly  enjoyed  these 
games,  especially  the  changing  afterwards  (when  we  roasted 
chestnuts  in  the  fire  as  we  undressed),  and  the  long  teas. 
Milton,  my  mess-mate,  was  an  enthusiastic,  but  not  a  skilful 
chemist,  and  one  day  he  blew  off  his  eyebrows  while  making 
an  experiment. 

At  the  end  of  my  first  half  we  had  a  concert  in  the  house, 
in  which  I  took  part  in  the  chorus.  I  had  organ  lessons  from 
Mr.  Clapshaw,  and  during  my  first  half  I  once  had  the  treat  of 
hearing  Jimmy  Joynes  preach  in  Lower  Chapel.  He  had  been 
lower  master  for  years,  and  had  just  left  Eton  ;  he  came  down 
to  pay  a  visit,  and  this  was  the  last  time  he  ever  preached  at 
Eton.  His  sermons  were  of  the  anecdotal  type,  full  of  quaint, 
pathetic,  and  dramatic  stories  of  the  triumph  of  innocence. 
They  were  greatly  enjoyed  by  the  boys.  In  the  evening,  after 
prayers,  my  tutor  used  to  come  round  the  boys'  rooms  and  talk 
to  every  boy.  He  used  to  come  into  the  room  saying  :  "  Qu'est- 
ce  que  e'est  que  ci  que  ca  ?  "  My  friends  were  Dunglass,  Herbert 
Scott,  Milton,  Stewart,  and  Brackley.  After  Eton  days  I  never 
saw  Stewart  again  till  1914,  when  the  war  had  just  begun.  I 
met  him  then  in  Paris.  He  was  in  the  Intelligence.  He  had 
been  imprisoned  in  Germany  before  the  war,  and  he  was  killed 
one  day  while  riding  through  the  town  of  Braisne  on  the  Aisne. 

Dunglass  was  peculiarly  untidy  in  his  clothes,  and  his  hat 
was  always  brushed  round  the  wrong  way.  My  tutor  used  to 
say  to  him  :  "  You're  covered  with  garbage  from  head  to  foot," 
and  sometimes  to  me  :  "  If  your  friends  and  relations  could  see 
you  now  they  would  have  a  fit." 

In  the  evenings  the  Lower  boys  did  their  work  in  pupil  room. 
Boys  in  fifth  form,  when  they  were  slack,  did  the  same  as  a 
punishment,  and  this  was  called  penal  servitude.  While  they 
prepared  their  lessons  or  did  their  verses,  my  tutor  would  be 
taking  older  boys  in  what  was  called  private  ;  this  in  our  case 
meant  special  lessons  in  Greek.  One  night  these  older  boys 
were  construing  Xenophon,  and  a  boy  called  Rashleigh  could 
not  translate  the  phrase,  "  Tous  Trpos  «>«  Aeyovra?."  x  My  tutor 
repeated  it  over  and  over  again,  and  then  appealed  to  us  Lower 
boys.     I  knew  what  it  meant,  but  when  I  was  asked  I  repeated 

1  I  have  looked  op  the  reference  and  miraculously  found  it.  My 
memory  after  thirt*-  three  years  is  correct.  The  phrase  ocean  in  Xeno- 
phon's  Anabasis,  Book  11.  v 


go  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

exactly  what  Rashleigh  had  said,  like  one  hypnotised,  much  to 
my  tutor's  annoyance. 

Sometimes  when  my  tutor  was  really  annoyed  he  would  say  : 

'  Do  you  ever  wake  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  and  think  what 
a  ghastly  fool  you  are  ?  "     Another  time  he  said  to  a  boy : 

'  You've  no  more  manners  than  a  cow,  and  a  bad  cow,  too." 
When  the  word  StW/*cu  occurred  in  Greek,  my  tutor  made  a 
great  point  of  distinguishing  the  pronunciation  of  SuVa/Aai  and 
Swapa.  Svi'dfiai  he  pronounced  more  broadly.  When  we 
read  out  the  word  8vva.fA.ai  we  made  no  such  distinction,  and  he 
used  to  say,  "  Do  you  mean  dunam$  or  dunamai  ?  "  It  was  our 
great  delight  to  draw  this  expression  from  him,  and  whenever 
the  word  SiW/mi  occurred  we  were  careful  to  accent  the  last 
syllable  as  slightly  as  possible.     It  never  failed. 

We  did  verses  once  a  week.  A  little  later  most  of  these 
were  done  in  the  house  by  a  boy  called  Malcolm,  who  had 
the  talent  for  dictating  verses,  on  any  subject,  while  he  was 
eating  his  breakfast,  with  the  necessary  number  of  mistakes 
and  to  the  exact  degree  of  badness  needed  for  the 
standard  of  each  boy,  for  if  they  were  at  all  too  good  my  tutor 
would  write  on  them,  "  Who  is  the  poet  ?  "  In  return  for  this 
I  did  the  French  for  him  and  a  number  of  other  boys.  Latin 
verses  both  then,  and  until  I  left  Eton,  were  the  most  important 
event  of  the  week's  work.  When  one's  verses  had  been  done 
and  signed  by  one's  tutor  one  gave  a  gasp  of  relief.  Sometimes 
he  tore  them  up  and  one  had  to  do  them  again.  I  was  a 
bad  writer  of  Latin  verse.  The  kind  of  mistakes  I  made 
exasperated  my  tutor  to  madness,  especially  when  I  ventured 
on  lyrics  which  he  implored  me  once  never  to  attempt  again. 
In  spite  of  the  trouble  verses  gave  one,  even  when  they  were 
partly  done  by  someone  else,  one  preferred  doing  them  to  a  long 
passage  of  Latin  prose,  which  was  sometimes  a  possible  alterna- 
tive. It  is  a  strange  fact,  but  none  the  less  true,  that  boys  can 
acquire  a  mechanical  facility  for  doing  Latin  verse  of  a  kind, 
with  the  help  of  a  gradus,  without  knowing  either  what  the 
English  or  the  Latin  is  about. 

The  subjects  given  for  Latin  verse,  what  we  called  sense  for 
verses,  were  sometimes  amusing.  The  favourite  subject  from 
the  boys'  point  of  view  was  Spring.  It  was  a  favourite  subject 
among  the  masters,  too.  It  afforded  opportunities  for  innumer- 
able cliches,  which  were  easy  to  find.     One  of  the  masters 


ETON  91 

giving  out  sense  for  verses  used  t<>  say:  "This  week  we  will  do 

verses" — and  then,  as  if  it  were  something  unheard  of — 
"on  Spring.  Take  down  some  hints.  The  grass  is  green, 
she*  p  bleat,  sound  of  water  is  heard  in  the  distance — might 
perhaps  get  in  dcsilicntis  aqua-." 

The  same  master  said  one  day,  to  a  boy  who  had  done  some 

on  Charles  11.,  "  Castas  ct  infelixis  hardly  an  appropriate 

epithet  for  Charles  11."    Once  we  had  a  lyriconatoad.     "Avoid 

tin'  gardener,  a  dangerous  man,"  was  one  of  the  hints  which  1 

rendered  : 

"  Fas  tibi  sit  bufo  custodem  fallcrc  agelli." 

The  whole  of  my  first  half  was  like  Paradise,  and  I  came  back 
to  Membland  for  the  holidays  quite  radiant. 

When  I  went  back  for  my  second  half  I  was  in  the  Uppei 
Fourth  in  the  Lower  Mister's  Division.  The  Lower  Master  was 
Austen  Leigh  and  the  boys  called  him  the  Flea.  I  started, 
when  I  was  up  to  him,  the  fiction  that  I  could  scarcely  write, 
that  the  process  was  so  difficult  to  me  that  a  totally  illegible 
script  was  all  that  could  be  expected  from  me.  Tlus  was 
completely  successful  throughout  the  half,  but  in  Trials  I  did 
well.  I  had  started  off  by  getting  the  holiday  task  prize, 
the  holiday  task  being  the  Lord  of  the  Isles,  and  as  I  had  read  a 
great  part  of  it  in  the  train  going  back,  and  as  none  of  the  other 
boys  had  read  any  of  it,  I  got  the  prize. 

Those  holiday^  Cherie  took  Susan  and  myself  to  Paris.  We 
stayed  at  the  Hotel  Normandy  in  the  Rue  dc  l'Echelle,  and  I 
started  from  Eton  the  day  before  the  result  of  Trials  was  de- 
clared. The  day  we  arrived  in  Paris  a  blue  telegram  came 
telling  us  the  result.  It  ran  as  follows  :  "  Brinkman  divinity 
prize,  distinction  in  Trials,  Trial  Prize."  This  meant  that  for 
1  he  distinction,  one  had  a  cross  next  to  one's  name  in  the  school 
list  for  the  rest  of  one's  Eton  career.  The  Trial  prize  meant 
one  was  first  in  Trials  in  the  division.  It  was  a  complete 
triumph,  and  the  Lower  Master  wrote  in  my  report  :  "  Had  1 
known  what  I  discovered  at  the  end  of  the  half  that  he  could 
write  perfectly  well,  I  would  have  torn  up  every  scrap  of  his 
work  during  the  half."  But  it  was  an  idle  regret,  BS  he  did  not 
discover  it  until  too  late.  We  spent  the  whole  of  the  holidays 
in  Paris  and  enjoyed  it  wildly. 

looking  at  a  letter  which  I  wrote  from  Paris  (March  iSSS) 


92  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

at  this  time,  I  see  we  did  some  strenuous  sight -seeing.  We 
went  to  Notre  Dame  des  Victoires,  to  the  Musee  Grevin,  to 
Sainte  Genevieve,  la  Foire  de  Jambon,  the  Jardin  d'Acclima- 
tation,  and  the  Bois  de  Boulogne ;  we  breakfasted  at  the 
Cafe"  de  Paris,  with  anisette  at  the  end  of  the  meal ;  went  to 
hear  "la  Belle  musique  sacree  "  at  the  Chatelet,  where  Made- 
moiselle Kraus  sang  and  Mounet  Sully  recited  ;  we  visited 
the  Pantheon,  saw  Victor  Hugo's  tomb,  the  Musee  Cluny  ; 
had  breakfast  at  Foyod's,  and  saw  the  Archbishop  of  Paris 
officiate  at  Notre  Dame,  and  went  to  the  Louvre.  All  this  was 
in  Holy  Week. 

The  next  week  we  went  to  Versailles,  the  Sainte  Chapelle, 
and  the  Invalides  ;  saw  Reichemberg  and  Samary  act  in  the 
Le  Monde  ou  Von  s'ennuie  at  the  Theatre  francais  and  Michel 
Strogoffat  the  Chatelet. 

On  Monday,  2nd  April,  I  wrote  home  :  "  Nous  allons  jeter  une 
plume  et  la  suivre."  We  also  saw  a  play  of  Georges  Ohnet's  at 
the  Porte  Saint  Martin  called  La  Grande  Marnilre  and  Le  Prophete 
at  the  opera,  with  Jean  de  Reske  singing  the  part  of  the  false 
Messiah.  We  saw  this  from  a  little  box  high  up  in  the  fourth  tier, 
and  when  we  arrived  we  found  a  lady  and  a  gentleman  in  our 
seats.  We  had  expressly  paid  for  the  front  seats.  Cherie  was 
indignant,  and  had  it  out  with  the  gentleman,  who  gave  way 
under  protest.  "  Vous  voyez,"  said  the  lady,  "  Monsieur  vous 
c«le  sa  place."  "  C'est  ce  qu'un  Monsieur  doit  faire,"  said  Cherie. 
"  On  rencontre  des  gens,"  said  the  lady,  shrugging  her  shoulders. 

We  did  not  go  to  see  L 'Abbe  Conslantin,  as  CheYie  said  it 
was  "  une  piece  de  careme." 

On  our  last  night  in  Paris  we  went  to  see  a  farce  called 
Cocart  et  Bicoquet  at  the  Renaissance.  This  play  had  been 
recommended  to  Cherie  by  a  French  friend  of  hers,  who  thought 
we  did  not  understand  French  enough  to  follow  dialogue. 
After  the  first  act,  Cherie  became  uneasy,  and  no  sooner  was 
the  second  act  well  under  way  than  Chdrie  took  us  away.  It 
was,  she  said  to  me,  no  play  for  Susan.  She  added  that  when- 
ever she  had  tried  to  distract  Susan's  attention  from  the  more 
scabrous  moments  by  saying,  "  Regarde  cette  manche,"  and 
by  calling  her  attention  to  interesting  details  in  the  toilettes  of 
the  audience,  I  had  recalled  Susan's  attention  to  the  play  by 
my  only  too  well-timed  laughter. 

The  year  after  this,  1889,  we  again  went  to  Paris — Cherie, 


ETON  93 

Susan,  and  myself-  -and  this  year  Hugo  came  with  u>.  Great 
preparations  were  being  made  for  the  Exhibition.  It  was  not 
wt  open,  but  the  Eiffel  Tower  was  finished,  and  we  saw  the 
reconstruction  of  the  Le  Vicux  Paris  and  a  representation  of 
Latude  escaping  from  the  Bastille. 

We  also  saw  Maitre  Guerin  performed  at  the  Theatre 
francais,  with  Got  Worms,  Baretta,  and  Pierson  in  the  cast. 
Got's  performance  as  the  old,  infinitely  cunning,  and  scheming 
notaire,  who  is  finally  deserted  by  his  hitherto  submissive 
wife,  was  said  to  be  the  finest  thing  he  ever  did. 

We  saw  two  melodramas — Robert  Macaire  and  La  Porteuse 
dc  Pain  ;  Zampa  at  the  Opera  Comique  and  Belle  Maman, 
Sardou's  comedy  at  the  Gymnase  ;  and  Cherie  and  I  went  to  see 
Sarah  Bernhardt  in  perhaps  the  worst  play  to  which  she  ever 
lent  her  incomparable  genius,  and  which,  I  imagine,  she  chose 
simply  to  give  herself  the  opportunity  of  playing  a  quiet  death 
scene.  It  was  an  adaptation  of  the  English  novel,  As  in  a 
Looking-Glass.  Bad  or  good,  I  enjoyed  it,  and  wrote  home  a 
detailed  criticism  of  the  play.  This  is  what  I  wrote  :  "  The 
adaptation  of  the  book  is  bad.  They  evidently  think  you  are 
perfectly  acquainted  with  the  book,  and  the  sharp  outline  and 
light  and  shade  of  character  is  not  sufficiently  marked.  In  the 
first  act  you  see  about  a  dozen  people  who  come  in  and  who 
don't  let  you  know  who  they  are,  and  who  never  appear  again, 
and  you  do  not  arrive  at  the  dramatic  part  till  the  last  act. 

"  The  story  is  briefly  thus  :  Lena  is  staying  with  Mrs. 
Broadway,  very  Sainle  Nitouche  !  everyone  admiring  her  and 
all  the  octogenaires  in  love  with  her.  She  (whose  passe  is  not 
sans  tache)  is  under  the  power  of  a  certain  Jack  Fortinbra>, 
who  forces  her,  under  the  penalty  of  unveiling  her  past,  to 
marry  a  certain  Lord  Ramsey.  Lena  has  in  her  possession  a 
letter  which  Ramsey  wrote  to  a  Lady  Dower,  whose  name  is 
also  Lena,  and  the  Utter  is  in  very  affectionate  terms.  Ramsey 
1  to  Beatrice,  and  Lena  shows  this  letter  to  Beatrice 
and  says  it  was  to  her  !  Of  course,  Beatrice  thinks  Ramsey 
un  hiche  and  leaves  the  house,  saying  her  marriage  i>  im- 
possible, and  leaving  a  letter  for  Ramsey  to  that  effect.  Act  II. 
is  in  Lena's  house.  Fortinbras  comes  and  plays  cards  with  a 
young  man  and  cheats.  Ramsey  sees  this,  and  Fortinbras 
is  turned  out  of  the  house. 

"  Act  III.,  MonteCarlo.    Lena  is  staying  there  with  Ram 


94  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

with  whom  she  is  now  desperately  in  love.  Fortinbras  appears 
and  asks  for  money,  which  she  gives.  Ramsey  comes  in  and 
asks  why  she  is  agitated.  She  says  she  is  helpless,  alone.  He 
confesses  his  love  for  her,  and  she,  in  a  nervous  excitement, 
says,  "  Je  t'adore,"  and  so  scheming  to  marry  for  money,  she 
finds  she  is  dreadfully  in  love  with  him. 

"  Act  IV. — They  are  married  and  in  Scotland.  Fortinbras 
appears  tracked  by  detectives  and  asks  for  200,000  (pounds  or 
francs  ?)  at  once,  or  he  tells  of  her  passe.  Then  Sarah  Bernhardt 
was  superb.  It  was  quite  impossible  for  her  to  get  the  money, 
and  she  is  so  happy  with  her  husband.  At  this  crisis  Ramsey 
comes  in  and  half  strangles  Fortinbras,  who,  when  let  go, 
reveals  all  Lena's  past.  At  the  words,  '  Cette  femme  m'aimait 
une  fois,'  Lena  jette  un  cri  d'angoisse,  I  would  have  given  any- 
thing for  you  to  have  seen  her  act  that  scene.  Ramsey  hears 
it  all,  and,  when  given  the  proofs  that  are  in  letters,  throws 
them  into  the  fire,  and  Fortinbras  is  given  to  the  detectives  and 
Ramsey  is  alone  with  Lena  and  tells  her  that  he  really  believes 
what  the  man  said.  She  cannot  deny  it,  and  confesses  the 
whole  thing.  Her  acting  was  supreme,  and  Ramsey  says  to 
her,  '  Et  m'avez  vous  jamais  aime  ?  '  Then  she  gives  way  and 
bursts  into  sanglots,  and  implores  him  to  believe  her,  and  that 
she  adored  him.  He  refuses  to  believe  her  and  goes  out.  Then 
all  is  pantomime.  She  takes  up  a  knife,  throws  it  down,  gets  a 
little  bottle  of  '  morphine,'  drinks  it,  sits  down  with  Ramsey's 
photograph  in  her  hand  ;  then  come  seven  minutes  of  silence. 
All  pantomime,  but  what  pantomime  ;  she  quietly  dies.  I 
have  never  seen  such  a  splendid  bit  of  acting.  It  was  lovely. 
As  she  is  dying,  Ramsey  tries  to  come  in,  but  the  door  is  locked. 
He  comes  in  at  the  window  in  an  agony  of  grief  and  forgives 
her.  Just  when  he  is  at  the  door  she  stretches  out  her  hand 
and  falls  back  epuisee.     It  was  beautiful." 

I  remember  a  doctor  saying,  as  we  went  out  of  the  theatre : 
"  Mais  ce  n'est  pas  comme  cela  qu'on  meurt  de  la  morphine," 
— upon  which  someone  else  answered  :  "  Alors,  ceux  qui  out  dit : 
Voila  une  mort  realiste  ont  dit  une  sottise.  Pourtant  elle  a 
ete  dite." 

We  went  to  the  cemetery  of  the  Pere  Lachaise,  and  the  tombs 
that  I  cited  in  a  letter  are  those  of  Helo'ise  and  Abelard,  Balzac, 
Alfred  de  Musset,  Bizet,  and  Gericault. 

I  went  back  to  Eton  for  my  first  summer  half,  which  is 


I  T«  >N  95 

said  to  be  the  most  blissful  moment  <•!  Eton  life,  and  I 
think  in  my  case  it  was.  The  first  tiling  one  had  to  do  was 
to  pass  swimming.  1  had  learnt  to  swim  at  Eastbourne,  and  I 
swam  as  well  as  I  ever  did  before  or  afterwards,  but  to  pass, 
one  had  to  swim  in  a  peculiar  way.  The  passing  was  super- 
vised by  my  tutor,  and  I  failed  to  pass  twice,  chiefly,  I  think, 
owing  to  the  curious  nature  of  my  dive  from  the  boat,  which 
took  the  form  of  a  high  leap  into  the  air  and  a  descent  on  all- 
fours  into  the  water.  "  Swim  to  the  bank,"  said  my  tutor, 
much  to  my  disappointment.  The  second  time  I  failed  again, 
but  there  was  soon  a  third  trial,  and  I  passed.  I  at  once  hired 
an  outrigged  gig  with  another  boy,  and  then  a  period  of  unmixed 
enjoyment  began  :  rows  up  to  Surley  every  afternoon  and 
ginger-beer  in  the  garden  there,  bathes  in  the  evening  at 
Cuckoo  Weir,  teas  at  Little  Brown's,  where  one  ordered  new 
potatoes  and  asparagus,  or  cold  salmon  and  cucumber,  goose- 
berries and  cream,  raspberries  and  cream,  and  every  fresh 
delicacy  of  the  season  in  turn.  Little  Brown's,  the  school 
sock-shop  next  to  Ingalton  Drake's,  the  stationer's,  which  we 
still  called  Williams',  was  then  controlled  by  Brown,  who  was 
a  comfortable  lady  rather  like  the  pictures  of  the  Queen  of 
Hearts  in  Alice  in  Wonderland.  She  was  assisted  by  Phcebe, 
who  kept  order  with  great  spirit,  in  a  seething  mass  of  unruly 
boys,  all  shouting  at  the  top  of  their  voices  and  clamouring  to 
be  served  first.  Brown's  was  open  before  early  school,  and  if 
one  had  the  energy,  one  got  up  in  time  to  go  and  have  a  coffee 
and  a  bun  there.  It  was  well  worth  the  effort,  for  the  buns 
were  slit  open  and  filled  with  butter,  and  then,  not  toasted,  but 
baked  in  the  oven,  and  were  crisp,  hot,  and  delicious.  Brown 
and  Phoebe  had  the  most  marvellous  memory  for  faces  I 
have  ever  come  across.  They  would  remember  a  boy  years 
afterwards,  and  when  I  was  at  Eton  I  used  often  to  hear  Brown 
say  to  Phoebe,  as  some  very  middle-aged  man  passed  the 
window,  "  There's  Mr.  So-and-so." 

There  was  a  pandemonium  in  the  front  of  the  shop  ;  in 
the  little  room  at  the  back  of  the  shop  only  swells  went. 
There  was  another  sock-shop  called  Rowland's,  mar  Barnes 
Pool,  which  had  a  garden  and  an  arbour,  and  sold  scalloped 
prawns   in    winter    and   wonderful    strawberry   nv  in    the 

summer.     Then  farther  up  town  there  was  Califano,  who  was 
celebrated   for   his   fiery   temper,    and   in    Windsoi   there   was 


96  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Leighton's.  But  Brown's  was  the  smallest  and  cosiest  of  all 
the  sock-shops,  and  nothing  at  any  of  the  others  could  vie  with 
her  hot  buns  in  the  early  morning. 

I  was  now  in  Remove,  and  once  more  under  the  tuition 
of  Mr.  Heygate.  We  no  longer  translated  Greek  stories  and 
epigrams  from  the  delightful  collection  called  Sertum,  which  was 
used  in  the  Fourth  Form.  This  book  is  now  out  of  print,  but 
I  fortunately  possess  a  copy.  It  is  a  most  delightful  anthology 
of  short  anecdotes  and  poems.  On  the  other  hand,  we  did 
Sidgwick's  Greek  exercises,  a  book  of  very  short  English  stories, 
winch  have  to  be  translated  into  Greek.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
charming  books  ever  written,  and  even  now  I  can  read  it  when 
I  can't  read  anything  else. 

I  can't  remember  what  we  read  in  school  that  half,  but  I 

remember  reading  Monte  Cristo  out  of  school.     My  mother  had 

given  me  an  illustrated  edition  of  it  on  my  birthday.     On  the 

afternoon  of  a  whole  school  day  I  was  reading  of  Dantes'  escape 

from  the  Chateau  d'H,  and  I  became  oblivious  of  the  passage 

of  time.     The  school  clock  chimed  the  quarters,  but  I  heeded 

them  not.     Just  before  the  school  hour  was  ended  the  boys' 

maid  came  in  and  told  me  I  was  missing  school.     I  flung  away 

my  book  and  ran  breathless  to  upper  school,  where  I  found  the 

boys  just  going  out.     I  had  missed  school,  an  unheard-of  thing 

to  do,  which  meant  probably  writing  out  endless  exercises  of 

Bradley's  Latin  prose.     Each  division  had  what  was  called  a 

Prepostor,  a  boy  who  kept  a  book  in  which  he  was  supposed 

to  note  all  boys  who  were  absent,  and  to  find  out  if  they  were 

staying  out,  which  meant  staying  out  of  lessons,  that  is  to  say, 

staying  indoors  on  account  of  sickness,  in  which  case  the  Dame 

of  the  house  had  to  sign  a  statement  to  that  effect  in  the  pre- 

postor's  book,  and  add  also  whether  they  were  excused  lessons  ; 

if  they  were  not  excused  lessons  they  had  to  do  written  work  in 

the  house.      On  this  day  the  prepostor  had  not  noticed  my 

absence,  nor  had  Mr.  Heygate,  and  I  joined  the  crowd  of  boys 

running  downstairs  as  if  I  had  been  there  all  the  time. 

There  were  two  sorts  of  masters  at  Eton — those  who  could 
keep  order  and  those  who  couldn't.  With  those  who  could, 
there  was  never  any  question  of  ragging.  Boys  knew  at  once 
what  was  impossible  and  accepted  it.  They  also  knew  in  a 
moment  when  it  was  possible,  and  they  lost  no  minute  of  their 
opportunities,  and  at  once  began  to  harass  the  wretched  master 


ETON  97 

with  importunate,  absurd,  and  impertinent  questions,  seeing  how 
far  they  could  go  in  veiled  insolence  without  ■  pping  the 

line  of  danger.    It  was  the  masters  who  taughl  mathematics  and 

French  who  had  the  worst  time,  with  tin-  e.\<  eption  of  Monsieur 
Hua,  who  was  an  admirable  teacher  and  stood  no  nonsense. 

In    Remove   we    did    science.     There   were    three   science 
masters — Mr.  Porter,  Mr.  Drew,  and  Mr.  Hah-  (Badger).     I  was 
taught   by  them  all  in    turn.     Mr.   Drew  used   to    produce  a 
mysterious  and  rather  dirty-looking  bit  of  stony  metal  or  metallic 
stone,  and  say  in  a  confidential  whisper :  "  Do  you  know  what 
that  is  ?     It's  quartz."     Badger  Hale  had  only  one  experiment. 
It  was  a  split  football  which  was  made  to  revolve  by  turning 
a  handle,  and  proved,  but  hardly  to  our  satisfaction,  the  centri- 
fugal tendency  of  the  earth.    Mr.  Porter's  science  lectures,  on  the 
other  hand,  were  fraught  with  excitement.     Apparatus  after 
apparatus  was  brought  in,  and  experiment  after  experiment  was 
attempted,  sometimes  involving  explosions.     Sometimes  they 
failed.    Sometimes,  just  at  the  critical  moment  we  would  laugh. 
Mr.  Porter  would  say  :  "  I  have  been  three  days  trying  to  get  this 
experiment  ready,  and  now  you  have  spoilt  it  all."     "  Please, 
sir,  we  were  not  laughing,"  we  would  say.     "  You  were  looking 
as  if  you  were  laughing,  and  that  disturbs  me  just  as  much," 
Mr.  Porter  would  answer.     It  was  no  use  accusing  us  of  laughing, 
because  we  always  denied  it  at  once,  and  after  a  time  he  would 
always  say  :  "  Write  out  the  verbs  in  mi  for  looking  as  if  you  were 
laughing."     At  the  end  of  the  half,  Mr.  Porter  gave  what  was 
called  a  "  Good  Boys'  Lecture,"  at  which  the  first  nine  boys  of 
all  the  various  sets  he  taught  attended,  if  their  work  had  been 
satisfactory  throughout  the  term.     I  went  to  three  of  these  or 
more.     They  were  lectures  with  coloured  magic-lantern  slides, 
allowing  views  of  places  all  over  the  world,  from  Indus  to  the 
Pole.     Never  have    I  enjoyed  anything  more.     There  was  a 
slide  of   Vesuvius  in  eruption,  and  slides  of  Venice  and  New 
Zealand,  which  were  entrancingly  beautiful.     But  one  half,  the 
Good  Boy  Lecture  was  confined  to  Mr.  Porter's  holiday  trip  to 
the  Isle  of  Skye,  and  the  slides  were  not  coloured.     This  lecture 
was  a  disappointment,  and  I  am  afraid,  from  the  boys'  point  of 
view,  a  failure.    Another  remarkable  lecture  Mr.  Porter  gave  was 
on  soap-bubbles.     Films  oi  soap  bubble  were  projected  by  some 
device  on  to  a  screen,  so  that  you  saw  the  prismatic  colours 
enlarged  and  as  vivid  as  rainbow-.     While  thi     wa    going  on, 

7 


98  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

a  boy  called  Harben,  who  had  a  fruity  alto  voice,  sang  a  senti- 
mental song  into  a  tube  ;  the  vibrations  of  the  sound  had  a 
strange  effect  on  the  soap-bubble  films,  and  made  them  change 
rapidly  into  a  multitude  of  kaleidoscopic  shapes  and  gyrations 
and  symmetrical  patterns.  So  Mr.  Porter  was  the  precursor  of 
Skriabin's  Symphony,  in  which  the  music  is  assisted  by  visible 
colour. 

Mr.  Porter  gave  a  series  of  lectures  on  electricity  out  of 
school.  I  and  a  boy  in  my  house,  Francis  Egerton,  applied 
to  go  to  these.  Mr.  Porter  somewhat  reluctantly  and  sus- 
piciously allowed  us  to  come.  They  were  rather  stiff  and  ad- 
vanced lectures,  involving  a  good  deal  of  formula  writing  on  the 
blackboard  with  pi  and  other  mysterious  signs,  but  there  were 
also  experiments.  We  did  not  understand  one  word  of  it, 
but  soon  a  difficult  experiment  was  begun,  which  Mr.  Porter 
said  had  taken  him  days  to  prepare.  He  was  doubtful  whether 
it  would  succeed.  This  was  a  rash  remark.  Egerton  and  I 
rocked  with  laughter.  We  laughed  till  we  cried.  There  was 
no  question  of  looking  as  if  we  were  laughing.  We  were  not 
allowed  to  go  to  any  more  lectures  on  electricity.  There  was  an 
assistant  masters'  prize  given  for  science,  and  it  was  either  that 
or  the  following  year  that  the  subject  was  physiography.  I  went 
in  for  this  prize,  staying  out  the  whole  Sunday  before  so  as  to 
have  time  to  read  the  book  on  which  we  were  to  be  examined, 
a  short  book  by  Huxley.  I  competed  and  won  the  prize.  When 
it  came  to  choosing  a  book  for  my  prize,  I  chose  The  Epic  of 
Hades,  by  Lewis  Morris.  I  had  to  go  to  Mr.  Cornish,  who  was 
not  yet  Vice-Provost,  to  have  my  name  written  in  it.  He  was 
disgusted  with  my  choice,  and  he  advised  me  to  change  the 
book.  But  I  was  obdurate.  I  had  chosen  the  book  for  its  nice 
smooth  binding,  and  nothing  would  make  me  reconsider  my 
decision.  '  It's  poor  stuff,"  said  Mr.  Cornish  ;  "it's  like  boys' 
Latin  verses  when  they're  very  good." 

There  were  two  other  French  masters  besides  M.  Hua — M. 
Roublot  and  M.  Banck.  M.  Banck  was  sublimely  strict,  but  M. 
Roublot  was  easygoing,  good-natured,  but  lacking  in  authority. 
During  his  lesson  we  used  to  read  the  newspapers  and  write 
our  letters,  but  we  liked  him  too  much  to  rag.  We  used  to  bring 
in  all  our  occupations  for  the  week,  and  stacks  of  writing-paper. 
One  day  when  this  was  happening,  and  every  boy  was  pleasantly 
but  busily  engaged  in  some  occupation  of  his  own,  who  should 


ETON  99 

walk  in  but  the  Headmaster,  Dr.  Wane.  The  newspapers  and 
the  writing-paper  and  envelopes  disappeared  as  by  magic,  and 
M.  Roublot  at  once  put  on  the  if<  I  boy  to  construe.  Dr. 
Warre,  who  had  grasped  the  situation,  told  us  that  our  conduct 
was  disgraceful. 

He  often  made  sudden  visits  to  divisions,  and  stood  up  by 
the  master's  desk  while  the  work  went  on.  These  visits  were 
always  alarming,  and  one  day,  when  he  had  jost  gone  out  of 
the  room,  one  of  the  boys  said :  "  Lord,  how  that  man  makes 
me  sweat  !  "  But  there  was  one  other  French  master  who  was 
not  French,  but  far  more  formidable  than  all  the  rest,  and 
this  was  Mr.  Frank  Tarver.  Mr.  Tarver  was  a  perfect  French 
scholar,  and  when  he  explained  what  the  word  bock  meant, 
and  said  :  "  When  you  go  to  a  cafe  in  Paris  you  sit  down  and  say, 
'  Garcon,  un  bock,'  "  one  felt  that  one  had  before  one  a  perfect 
man  of  the  world.  But  sometimes  then  were  no  bounds  to  his 
anger,  especially  if  he  found  that  one  had  not  looked  out  words 
in  the  dictionary,  or  if  one  translated  encore  by  again.  One  day 
I  remember  his  being  in  such  a  passion  that  he  took  a  drawer 
from  his  desk  and  flung  it  on  the  ground.  It  is  a  great  thing  to 
be  able  to  do  this  effectually.  The  boys  quaked.  Most  of  us 
liked  him  very  niueh  all  the  same  ;  but  to  some  he  was  a  terror. 

Mathematical  lessons  were  always  a  difficulty  in  my  case. 
I  should  never  have  passed  Trials  in  mathematics  had  it  not  been 
for  Euclid,  which  counted  together  with  arithmetic  and  algebra. 
Fortunately  I  could  do  Euclid  without  difficulty,  so  I  always 
got  enough  marks  in  that  subject  to  make  up  for  getting  none 
at  all  in  the  two  other  branches  of  the  science. 

Every  week  we  had  a  task  called  an  extra-work  to  do  out 
of  school,  which  was  meant  to  represent  an  hour's  work  of  mathe- 
matics, and  consisted  of  sums  in  arithmetic  and  algebra.  It 
generally  took  me  more  than  an  hour,  and  I  never  managed  to 
get  a  sum  right.  When  we  used  to  get  into  hopeless  arrears 
with  <>ur  work,  and  everything  was  in  an  inextricable  tangl<  . 
there  was  always  one  solution,  and  that  was  to  stay  out  ;  but 
to  be  excused  lessons  one  had  to  go  to  bed,  and  for  that  it  was 
necessary  to  catch  cold.  But  just  an  ordinary  attack  of  Friday 
fever  was  enough  to  stay  out.  We  complained  of  a  bad  head- 
ache and  incipient  insomnia,  and  Miss  Copeman  let  us  stay  out 
at  once,  thinking  it  might  be  the  beginning  of  measles,  and  we 
sat  in  her  sitting-room  leading  a  novel  till  the  crisis  was  over. 


ioo  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

At  the  slightest  sign  of  a  real  streaming  cold  my  tutor  used 
to  pack  us  off  to  bed  and  keep  us  there  till  it  was  gone,  and  we 
were  allowed  bound  volumes  of  the  Illustrated  London  News 
from  the  boys'  library,  and  my  tutor  would  lend  us  books  from 
his  own  library. 

Each  boy  in  a  division  had  to  be  prepostor  for  the  division 
for  a  week  at  a  time  in  turn.  With  the  prepostor 's  book  one 
marked  in  the  boys  who  were  absent,  either  from  school  or 
chapel.  One  had  a  list  of  the  boys'  names  at  the  end  of  the 
book  and  ticked  them  off  as  they  walked  into  chapel.  This 
sounds  a  simple  thing  to  do,  but  as  the  boys  used  to  come  in 
at  the  last  minute  and  all  together,  and  one  had  to  take  up  the 
book  to  a  master  before  chapel  began,  I  found  it  flustering  to  a 
degree,  and  never  knew  if  I  had  marked  everyone  in  or  not.  I 
had  to  go  to  the  Headmaster  once  for  losing  the  prepostor's 
book,  and  he  said  I  had  played  fast  and  loose  with  a  position  of 
grave  responsibility,  and  gave  me  three  exercises  of  Bradley's 
Prose  to  write  out. 

After  the  summer  half  I  was  in  Arthur  Benson's  division. 
We  read  passages  from  the  Odyssey,  Virgil,  and  Horace's  Odes, 
the  Second  Book,  and  for  the  first  time  I  enjoyed  some  Latin. 
I  thought  Horace's  Odes  delightful.  Arthur  Benson  used  to 
make  us  draw  pictures  illustrating  episodes  in  Greek  history, 
and  he  would  stick  them  up  on  the  wall  if  they  were  good. 
One  of  the  subjects  suggested  was  the  bridge  of  boats  that 
Xerxes  threw  across  the  sea,  and  I  remember  drawing  a  mag- 
nificent picture,  with  the  hills  of  the  Chersonese  in  the  back- 
ground, copied  from  some  illustrations  of  the  Crimean  War,  and 
a  realistic  flat  bridge  made  of  planks  placed  on  broad  punts. 
He  was  delighted  with  the  picture  and  put  it  up  at  once,  and 
sometimes  he  used  to  take  older  boys  to  see  it. 

There  was  not  much  religious  instruction  at  Eton.  We 
construed  the  Greek  Testament  on  Monday  mornings,  but  this 
was  a  Greek  lesson  like  any  other  ;  and  Sunday  was  made 
hideous  by  an  exercise  called  Sunday  Questions,  which  had  to 
be  done  on  that  day,  and  which  we  always  put  off  doing  to 
the  last  possible  moment.  These  were  questions  on  historical 
points  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  entailed  finding  out  the 
answers  from  some  such  book  as  Maclear's  Old  Testament 
History,  and  writing  four  large  sheets  of  MSS.  The  questions 
were  sometimes  puzzling,  and  we  used  to  consult  Miss  Copeman, 


ETON  io  i 

and  sometimes,  as  a  last  resort,  my  tutor,  who  used  to  say  : 
"  I  can't  think  what  Mr.  Benson  " — or  whoever  it  might  be 
— "  can  mean."  I  have  still  got  a  copy  of  Sunday  Questions 
done  at  Eton.  In  this  set  wc  were  told  to  give  the  probable 
dates  showing  the  duration  of  the  kingdoms  of  Israel  and 
Judah,  and  what  was  going  on  in  any  other  countries.  Another 
question  is  :  "  Why  was  Pharaoh  Necho  against  Judah  ?  How 
did  he  treat  their  successive  kings?  '  And  the  la^t  question 
(there  were  several  others)  was  :  "  Distinguish  cart  fully  between 
Jehoiakim  and  Jehoiakin."  I  seem  to  have  answered  these 
questions  rather  evasively,  but  I  got  seven  marks  out  of  ten. 

Besides  this,  boys  got  their  religion  from  the  sermons  in 
Chapel,  of  which  they  were  highly  critical.  They  enjoyed  a 
good  preacher,  and  some  of  the  masters  and  guests  were  good 
preachers,  but  the  boys  were  merciless  critics  of  a  bad  or  ludi- 
crous preacher,  and  there  were  many  of  these.  One  of  the 
masters  preached  symbolic  sermons  about  the  meaning  of  the 
Four  Beasts.  Another  used  to  begin  his  sermons  by  saying : 
"  The  story  of  the  Prodigal  Son  is  too  well  known  to  repeat. 

We  all  know  how "  and  then  elaborately  retell  what  was 

supposed  to  be  too  well  known  to  tell  at  all.  Before  boys  were 
confirmed  they  received  special  tuition  on  religious  and  moral 
topics  from  their  tutor,  but  I  missed  it  by  having  measles.  So 
I  was  confirmed  in  the  holidays,  and  just  before  my  confirma- 
tion it  struck  my  mother  that  I  was  singularly  unprepared,  so 
she  sent  me  to  see  my  Uncle  Henry  Ponsonby's  brother,  who 
was  a  clergyman.  We  called  him  Uncle  Fred  ;  his  sister  had 
married  one  of  my  uncles.  He  had  a  great  sense  of  humour, 
and  was  rather  shy.  He  was  also  extremely  High  Church. 
When  I  arrived  with  a  note  from  my  mother,  in  which  he  was 
asked  to  examine  me  in  theology,  he  was  embarrassed,  and  he 
said :  '  Well,  I  will  ask  you  your  catechism,  What  is  your 
name,  N.  or  M.  ?  "  And  then  he  laughed  and  said,  "  I  think 
that  will  do."  When  I  told  my  mother  this,  she  sent  me  to 
another  clergyman  who  did  talk,  but  confined  the  conversation 
to  moral  generalities,  and  said  no  word  about  the  catechism.  So 
I  may  say  I  had  no  religious  instruction  at  school  during  all  my 
school-time,  for  which  I  have  always  been  profoundly  grateful. 

Music  lessons  became  a  difficulty  and  a  stumbling-block  as 
time  went  on.     I  had  organ  lessons,  and  they  \v<  I 
given  out  of  school,  and  these  lessons  and  the  necessary  pra<  tice 


102  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

took  up  a  lot  of  one's  spare  time,  besides  having  to  give  way  to 
work.  Mr.  Joseph  Barnby,  the  organist  and  the  head  of  the 
music  masters,  said :  "  Your  parents  pay  for  your  music 
lessons  just  as  they  pay  for  your  Latin  lessons,  and  so  you 
ought  to  take  just  as  much  trouble  about  them."  This  was 
quite  true,  but  the  other  masters  did  not  see  the  matter  in 
the  same  light.  They  couldn't  be  expected  to  take  music 
lessons  seriously,  and  said  that  music  must  in  all  cases  always 
give  way  to  work. 

The  result  was  one  scamped  one's  practice  and  shirked  one's 
music  lesson  on  every  possible  opportunity.  Matters  came  to 
such  a  pitch  that  I  was  sent  for  by  Mr.  Barnby.  The  situation 
was  aggravated  because  Dunglass  and  I  had  unwittingly  offended 
the  violin  master,  and  had  gone  into  his  room  while  he  was  giving 
a  lesson  to  another  boy,  and  had  then  shut  the  door  rather 
more  violently  than  was  necessary.  Mr.  Barnby  was  indignant. 
My  brother  John  had  been  one  of  his  best  pupils.  He  said  our 
conduct  was  scandalous.  I  had  employed  base  subterfuges  to 
shirk  music  lessons,  and  I  and  Dunglass  had  insulted  dear  kind 
Mr.  Morsh.  We  apologised  to  Mr.  Morsh,  and  things  went 
more  smoothly  ;  but  I  gave  up  the  organ  and  had  lessons  on  the 
pianoforte  instead.  Mr.  Barnby  was  quite  right,  but  he  got  no 
sympathy  from  the  other  masters,  who  continued  to  treat  music 
as  an  utterly  unimportant  side  issue  which  must  give  way  to 
everything  else.  The  result  being,  of  course,  that  directly  boys 
found  that  music  lessons  made  it  more  difficult  for  them  to  get 
through  their  work,  they  gave  up  learning  music.  I  have  never 
stopped  meeting  people  in  after  life  who  are  naturally  musical, 
and  bitterly  regretted  not  having  been  taught  music  seriously  as 
boys  ;  and  if  parents  were  wise  they  would  insist  on  music  being 
taken  seriously,  if  they  pay  for  music  lessons  for  their  boys. 
But  as  yet  parents  have  done  no  such  thing.  Besides  music 
lessons,  there  was  the  musical  society,  which  consisted  of  an 
orchestra  and  a  chorus,  and  performed  a  cantata  at  the  school 
concert  at  the  end  of  the  half.  I  belonged  to  this  later,  and  we 
sang  Parry's  setting  to  Swinburne's  Eton  "  Ode  "  at  the  Eton 
Tercentenary  Concert  in  June  1891.  Mr.  Barnby  used  to  con- 
duct, and  had  an  amazing  knack  of  discovering  someone  who  was 
not  singing,  or  singing  a  wrong  note.  The  concerts  were,  I  used 
to  think,  intensely  enjoyable.  There  was  an  atmosphere  of 
triumph  about  them  when  the  swells  used  to  walk  in  at  the 


ETON  103 

beginning  in  evening  clothe-,,  and  coloured  ■  arves,  which  stood 
for  various  achievements  either  on  the  river,  the  cricket  or  the 
football  field.  As  each  hero  walked  in  there  were  thunders  of 
applause.  Then  a  treble  or  an  alto  u  ed  to  sing  a  song  that 
reduced  the  audience  to  tears:  "  Lay  my  head  on  yourshoulder, 
Daddy,"  or  "  The  Better  Land."  There  was  a  boy  called 
Clarke,  who  used  to  sing  year  after  year  till  his  voice  broke.  1  [e 
had  a  melting  voice.  During  my  last  half  at  Eton  there  was  a 
boy  called  Herz,  who  sang  "  Si  vous  n'avcz  rien  a  me  dire," 
with  startling  dramatic  effect,  exactly  tike  a  French  professional. 
But  the  best  moment  of  all  was  when  the  Captain  of  the  Boats 
sang  the  solo  in  the  Eton  Boating  Song,  whether  he  had  got  a 
voice  or  not,  and  then  the  whole  school  sang  the  "  Carmen 
Etonense  "  at  the  end.  What  an  audience  it  was !  How  they 
yelled  and  roared  when  a  song  pleased  them  !  I  used  sometimes 
to  go  to  St.  George's  Chapel  at  Windsor,  and  Sir  Walter  Parratt 
used  to  let  me  sit  in  the  organ  loft.  I  heard  Bach's  "  Passion 
Music  of  St.  Matthew  '  in  this  way,  and  Sir  Walter  said  : 
"  You  must  be  as  still  as  a  mouse." 

I  have  said  there  were  two  kinds  of  masters  :  those  who 
were  ragged  and  those  who  were  not.  The  master  who  was 
most  ragged  was  a  mathematical  master  called  Mr.  Mozley. 
He  punished,  but  could  never  stop  the  stream  of  impertinent 
comment  that  went  on  through  the  hours  of  his  instruction. 
One  day  we  got  a  boy  called  Studd  to  practise  "  God  save  the 
Queen  "  at  his  open  window.  His  window  looked  out  on  to  a 
yard,  and  Mr.  Mozley's  schoolroom  was  on  the  ground  floor  of 
the  house  next  door  to  ours  and  looked  out  on  to  the  same  yard. 
The  windows  were  open.  It  was  a  hot  summer's  afternoon,  and 
the  strains  of  "God  save  the  Queen  "  came  in  through  Mr. 
Mozley's  window.  Every  time  the  tune  began  we  stood  up. 
'  Sit  down,"  cried  the  Mo,  or  Ikey  Mo,  as  lie  was  called. 
"  National  Anthem,  sir,"  we  said  ;  "  we  must  stand  up."  Tin 
was  a  short  pause.  Then  the  tune  began  again.  Again  we  all 
stood  up.  Mr.  Mozley  rushed  to  the  window,  but  there  was  no 
sign  of  any  violinist.  For  ten  minutes  there  was  no  interruption, 
and  then,  just  when  Mr.  Mozley,  by  a  shower  of  punishments, 
thought  he  had  got  the  division  in  hand  once  more,  the  tune 
began  again,  and  again  we  all  stood  up  with  plaintive,  resigi 

faces,  as  though   nobody  minded   the   interruption    more  than 
we  did. 


104  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Another  master  who  was  mercilessly  ragged  was  Mr.  Bouchier,1 
who  was  deaf,  and  afterwards  a  famous  Times  correspondent 
at  Sofia — a  man  who  could  do  what  he  liked  with  the  Bulgars, 
but  who  could  not  manage  a  division  of  Eton  boys.  The  boys 
took  mice  into  his  schoolroom,  and  ultimately  he  had  to  go 
away. 

There   were    masters  who   were  stimulating  teachers  and 
roused  the  interest   of  boys  in  topics  outside  the   ordinary 
routine  of  work,  and  others  who  kept  scrupulously  to  the  routine. 
The  latter  were  the  fairest,  for  when  outside  topics  were  dis- 
cussed probably  only  a  minority  of  the  boys  listened.     It  was 
above  the  heads  of  many.     Arthur  Benson  kept  scrupulously 
to  the  routine  ;  he  made  it  as  interesting  as  he  could,  but  rarely 
diverged  on  to  stray  topics,  and  never  on  to  such  topics  that  would 
only  interest  a  few  of  the  boys.     Edward  Lyttelton  did  exactly 
the  opposite.    When  I  was  in  his  division  there  were  about  half  a 
dozen  boys  who  were  advanced,  and  had  got  shoved  up  into  his 
division  by  a  rapid  rise.    The  others  were  solid,  stolid  dunces. 
Edward  Lyttelton  devoted  his  time  to  the  intelligent,  and  spent 
much  time  in  conversation  on  such  topics  as  ritual  in  Church,  the 
reign  of  Charlemagne,  and  the  acting  at  the  Com6die  francaise. 
He  carried  on  teaching  by  asking  a  quantity  of  questions  which 
entailed  a  great  deal  of  interesting  comment  and  argument.     In 
the  meantime  the  dunces  ragged.     I  was  good  at  answering  his 
questions,  but  I  joined  in  the  ragging,  nevertheless,  partly  from 
a  sense  of  loyalty  to  raggers  in  general.     The  result  was  that  at 
the  end  of  the  half  I  was  top  of  his  division  for  the  school-time, 
but  I  forfeited  the  prize  owing,  as  he  said  in  my  report,  to  my 
incorrigible  babyishness.     My  tutor  thought  this  unfair,  and 
gave  me  a  book  instead  of  the  prize.     Mr.  Rawlins,  who  was 
afterwards  Lower  Master  and  then  Vice-Provost,  was  a  good 
teacher,  but  his  chief  hobby  was  grammar,  and  he  talked  far 
above  our  heads.     I  startled  him  one  day.     We  were  construing 
an  Ode  of  Horace,  where  a  phrase  occurred  mentioning  the 
difficulty  of  removing  her  cubs  from,  I  think,  a  Gaetulan  lioness.2 
He  said,  "There  is  a  parallel  to  that  in  French  poetry."     I 

1  When  he  died  at  Sofia,  he  was  canonized  as  a  national  hero,  and  his 
head  now  appears  on  some  of  the  Bulgarian  postage  stamps. 
2  "  Non  vides,  quanto  moveas  periclo, 
Pyrrhe,  Gaetulae  catulos  leaense  ?  " 

Horace,  Odes,  Book  in.  Ode  xx. 


ETON 


105 


said,  "  Yes,"  and  quoted  the  lines  from  Hern.ini  I  had  known  for 

so  long : 

"  II  vaudrait  mieux  aller  au  tigrc  meme 
Arracher  ses  petits  qu'a  moi  celui  que  j'aime." 

He  was  dumbstruck. 

I  was  two  years  a  lower  boy,  and  reached  the  lower  division 
of  fifth  form  by  September  1889.  Hugo  arrived  at  Eton,  and  we 
shared  a  room  together.  We  messed  together  with  Dunglass, 
who  had  an  order  at  Little  Brown's  of  a  shilling  a  day.  Every 
day  on  the  sideboard  of  the  passage  a  large  plate  used  to 
await  us  in  a  brown  paper  parcel  containing  eggs  and  bacon 
or  sausages  or  fish.  My  tutor  changed  his  house,  and  we 
exchanged  the  convenient  house  opposite  the  school-yard  for  a 
house  that  was  once  Marindin's,  on  the  Etonwick  road.  It 
was  far  to  go,  and  one  had  to  get  up  early  if  one  wished  for 
coffee  and  a  bun  at  Little  Brown's  before  early  school. 

Dunglass  and  I  used  to  read  a  good  many  books.  Rider 
Haggard  and  Edna  Lyall  were  our  favourite  authors ;  Stevenson 
got  a  second  or  third  place  ;  but  Jane  Eyre  and  Ben  Hur 
were  approved  of,  and  Monte  Cristo  got  the  first  prize  of  all. 
After  Rider  Haggard  and  Edna  Lyall,  I  had  a  passion  for 
Marion  Crawford's  books  and  read  every  one  I  could  get  hold 
of.  I  have  still  got  a  list  of  the  books  I  read  in  the  year  1889, 
marked  according  to  merit.     It  is  as  follows  : 


Name  of  Author 
Edna  Lyall 


Shorthouse 
Rider  I  iaggar< 


Alphonse  1  )au>!'  t 
Alexandre  Dumas 


Name  of  Book. 
Donovan  . 
rVe  Two  . 

In  the  Golden  Day-     . 
Won  by  Waiting 
Knight  Errant 
The    Autobiography    of   c 

Slander 
Derrick  Vaughan.  Novelist 
John  Ingle  sunt  . 
I  he  Countess  Eve 
King  Solomon's  Mines 
She. 

. 

Allan  Qttatsrmain 
Mr.  Mteson's  Will 

'$  Revenge 
Tartarin  de  Tarascon 
I  e  ComtS  de  Monte  Cristo 
1 .1  Dams  de  M 


Remarks. 

Worth  reading. 

if 

Exciting. 
Very  good. 
Worth  reading. 

Very  good. 

Worth  reading. 

Excellent. 

Not  worth  reading. 

Excellent. 

Thrilling. 

Worth  reading. 

Exciting. 

Trash. 

Trash, 

V 

!oct  book. 
Worth  reading. 


io6 


THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 


Name  of  Author. 

Hal6vy  . 
Octave  Feuillet 

Lord  Lytton    . 
Marion  Crawford 


Charles  Kingsley 
George  Eliot 


Whyte-Melville 


Lew  Wallace 

Graham 

Mrs.  Humphry  Ward 

Wilkie  Collins. 

A.  C.  Gunter  . 

Charles  Rea'le 

R.  L.  Stevenson 


Julian  Hawthorne 

Charlotte  Bronte 
Charles  Kin«slev 


Name  of  Book. 

L'Abbe"  Constantin 

Le  Roman  d'unjeune  homme 
pauvre  .... 

The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii  . 

Mr.  Isaacs 

Dr.  Claudius 

Zoroaster 

A  Roman  Singer 

A  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish  . 

Saraci/tesca 

Paul  Patoff 

Marzio's  Crucifix 

Greifenstein 

With  the  Immortals    . 

Sant'  Ilario 

Two  Years  Ago 

Silas  Mar  iter     . 

Adam  Bede 

Romola     .... 

The  Mill  on  the  Floss 

Katerfelto 

The  White  Rose 

The  Gladiators  . 

Ber  Hur  .... 

Necera      .... 

Robert  Els  mere  . 

The  Woman  in  While 

That  Frenchman 

Foul  Play 

Treasure  Island 

Kidnapped 

Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde    . 

New  Arabian  Nights  . 

The  Dynamiter . 

The  Master  of  Ballantrae     . 

Mrs.  Gainsborough's  Dia- 
monds .... 

Jane  Eyre 

Westward  Ho  ! 


Remarks. 
Very  good. 

Very  good. 
Excellent. 
Worth  reading. 


Very  good. 
Worth  reading. 
Exciting. 
Worth  reading. 
Thrilling. 
Worth  reading. 


Very  good. 
Perfect  book. 
Very  good. 
Perfect  book. 
Very  good. 
Worth  reading. 

>  » 

Excellent. 
Worth  reading. 

Very  good. 
Thrilling. 
Worth  reading. 
Perfect  book. 
Excellent. 
Thrilling. 
Very  good. 

t » 

Excellent 
Very  good. 


The  reason  the  last  two  have  no  comments  was  probably 
because  the  red  ink  in  which  the  comments  were  made  had  run 
out.  I  remember  being  particularly  thrilled  by  Jane  Eyre, 
and  so  was  Dunglass,  who  read  it  at  the  same  time. 

The  4th  of  June  was  an  excitement  for  boys  who  were  just 
beginning  their  Eton  career,  but  older  boys  were  most  blase 
about    it    and    preferred   short   leave.      We   made  great    pre- 


ETON  107 

parations  for  my  first  4th  of  June;  grease  spots  were  ironed 
out  of  the  tablecloth,  everything  that  looked  untidy  '■'. 
put  away  ;  the  window-box,  which  did  duty  for  a  garden,  was 
prepared  and  dei  Iced.  I  struck  out  a  bold  oote  in  my  window- 
box  by  having  a  fountain  in  it,  made  by  Mr.  Duffield  of  High 
Street,  according  to  my  instructions.  There  was  a  square 
tin  basin  and  a  fountain  in  the  middle  of  it,  which  was  fed  from 
a  tank  which  was  hung  high  up  by  the  side  of  the  window. 
The  fountain  worked  successfully,  but  made  a  great  mess, 
and  the  boys'  maid  had  no  patience  with  it.  When  my  tutor 
came  round  in  the  evening,  the  night  before  the  4th  of  June, 
he  said  the  room  looked  like  a  whited  sepulchre.  I  had  visitors 
on  the  4th  of  June.  Cherie  came,  and  I  forget  which  other 
members  of  the  family. 

Once  every  half  the  Headmaster  used  to  ask  Hugo  and  myself 
to  breakfast.  This  we  enjoyed;  it  was  an  excellent  breakfast, 
with  lots  of  sausages.  The  Headmaster  used  to  look  at  the 
Times,  comment  on  the  House  of  Commons,  quote  Horace, 
and  ask  after  John  and  Cecil.  Other  masters  asked  one  to 
breakfast  as  well,  and  I  think  few  things  gave  the  boys  so  much 
pleasure.  They  used  to  discuss  every  detail  of  the  breakfast 
with  the  other  boys  afterwards,  and  retail  everything  the  master 
had  said.  I  enjoyed  my  breakfasts  with  Mr.  Impey  most  ; 
he  used  to  tell  me  about  books,  and  we  used  to  discuss  Rider 
Haggard  and  Stevenson.  I  greatly  preferred  Rider  Haggard, 
and  1  had  just  read  King  Solomon's  Mines,  and  had  one  night 
sat  up  late  reading  She. 

Long  leave  and  short  leave  were  two  great  excitements. 
When  I  went  for  short  leave  I  used  to  go  by  the  earliest  possible 
train  and  arrive  at  my  sister  Margaret's  house  long  before 
breakfast.  When  long  leave  came  about,  we  always  went  to  a 
play  on  Saturday  night,  and  I  remember  seeing  Captain  Swift 
at  the  llaymarket,  and  Coquelin  in  L'Etowdi.  For  my  long 
leave  of  the  summer  of  18S9,  I  had  been  looking  forward  for 
days  to  going  to  see  Sarah  Bernhardt  in  La  Tosca,  but  when  I 
came  up  to  London,  I  found  to  my  horror  that  Cherie  and  my 
mother  had  both  been  told  it  was  too  horrible  a  play  to  go 
and  see.  My  eloquent  advocacy  overcame  Cherie's  scruples. 
"  Vraiment," she  said,  "  tu  serais  un  superbe  avocat."  And  she, 
Margaret,  and  1  went  off  to  the  Lyceum  and  thoroughly  enjoyed 
Sarah's  harrowing  and  electric  performance.     While  we  w 


108  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

having  dinner,  before  starting,  someone  who  was  there  said 
that  two  men  who  had  been  to  see  the  play  had  come  out  in 
the  middle.  Cherie,  who  by  that  time  had  decided  we  were  to 
go,  said  they  must  have  been  des  ponies  mouillees. 

I  think  it  was  in  1890  that  Queen  Victoria  opened  the  New 
Schools  at  Eton  and  made  a  speech.  And  one  summer  while 
I  was  at  Eton,  the  German  Emperor  inspected  the  Eton  Volun- 
teers. While  he  was  doing  this  on  horseback,  a  boy  called 
Cunliffe  let  off  his  rifle  and  the  German  Emperor's  horse  bolted 
into  the  playing  fields. 

Well-known  people  used  to  come  and  lecture  at  the  literary 
society  sometimes,  but  the  only  famous  man  I  heard  while  I 
was  at  Eton  was  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  lectured  at  the  literary 
society  in  March  1891,  on  Artemis,  as  revealed  in  Homer.  I 
was  fortunate  enough  to  get  a  ticket  for  this  lecturo.  The  boys, 
abstruse  as  the  subject  was,  were  spellbound.  There  was  only 
one  joke  in  the  lecture,  and  that  would  have  been  better  away. 
It  was  this  :  "  Some  of  you  may  have  heard  the  old  story  of 
the  moon  being  made  of  green  cheese."  Pause  for  laughter 
and  a  dead  silence.  "  The  moon  might  just  as  well,"  continued 
Mr.  Gladstone,  "  be  made  of  green  cheese  for  all  the  purposes 
she  serves  in  Homer." 

At  the  end  of  the  lecture  the  Provost  returned  thanks,  and 
then  Mr.  Gladstone  leapt  to  his  feet  and  made  an  impassioned 
speech  on  classical  education.  The  last  sentence  of  his  perora- 
tion was  as  follows  :  "  But  this,  Mr.  Provost,  I  venture  to  say, 
and  say  with  confidence,  and  it  is  not  a  fancy  of  youth  nor  the 
whim  of  the  moment,  but  the  conviction  forced  upon  me  even 
more  by  the  experience  of  life  than  by  any  reasoning  quality, 
that  if  the  purposes  of  education  be  to  fit  the  human  mind  for 
the  efficient  performance  of  the  greatest  functions,  the  ancient 
culture,  and,  above  all,  the  Greek  culture,  is  by  far  the  best  and 
strongest,  the  most  lasting,  and  the  most  elastic  instrument 
that  could  possibly  be  applied  to  it." 

As  he  said  these  words  his  eyes  flashed,  he  opened  and  raised 
his  arms,  and  his  body  seemed  to  expand  and  grow  tall.  He 
seemed  like  the  priest  of  culture  speaking  inspired  words.  His 
voice  rolled  out  in  a  golden  torrent,  and  as  he  said  the  words, 
"the  best  and  strongest,  the  most  lasting,  the  most  elastic," 
they  seemed  to  come  to  him  with  the  certainty  of  happy  inspira- 
tion and  with  the  accent  of  the  unpremeditated.     With  these 


ETON  tog 

words  his  voice  reached  its  highest  pitch  of  crescendo,  and  trim, 
slightly  dying  down,  melodiously  sank  into  silence. 

This  little  speech  showed  me  what  great  oratory  could  ' 
At  the  end  of  my  first  year  there  was  a  pri/<-  called  the 
Headmaster's  prize  for  French,  for  lower  boy>.  I  competed 
for  this.  It  was  always  rather  difficult  to  get  a  French  prize 
at  Eton,  as  the'e  was  usually  a  French  or  a  Canadian  boy  who 
spoke  and  knew  the  language  like  a  native.  There  was  a 
special  examination  paper  for  this  prize.  I  and  a  French  boy, 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten,  both  got  95  marks  out  of  100. 
Then  the  papers  were  looked  through  again,  and  it  was  found 
that  I  had  t-anslated  the  French  word  hdte  by  host,  when  it 
should  have  been  guest,  so  the  other  boy  was  given  the  prize, 
but  my  tutor  gave  me  a  book  as  a  consolation.  The  following 
year  I  competed  for  the  Headmaster's  French  prize  for  boys 
in  ft  th  form,  and  that  time  I  won  it,  much  to  the  delight  of 
CheYie  and  of  everyone  at  Mcmbland. 

In  fifth  form  we  learnt  German  as  an  extra.  German  was 
taught  by  Mr.  Ploetz,  who  knew  the  language  ;  and  by  other 
masters,  who  didn't.  During  the  lessons  of  the  hitter,  one  paid 
no  attention,  and  attended  to  one's  private  affairs.  Mr.  Ploetz 
was  an  excellent,  stimulating  teacher,  1  ut  most  unpopular  with 
tleother  masters.  The  boys  liked  him  ;  he  was  a  book  coll  ctor, 
and  had  a  fine  library.  He  taught  me  a  great  deal,  not  of 
German  as  I  paid  no  attention  to  the  regular  work,  but  I  picked 
up  from  him  a  mass  of  miscellaneous  information.  It  was  the 
fashion  to  rag  during  his  lessons,  and  I  outdid  everyone  in 
ingenious  interruption  during  Mr.  Ploetz'  lessons.  It  was  not 
that  he  couldn't  keep  order.  He  was  extremely  strict  and 
competent,  but  one  knew,  with  the  fiendish  intuition  of  boys, 
that  his  complaints  would  not  be  taken  seriously  by  the  other 
masters,  or  by  one's  tutor.  This  was  indeed  the  case.  There 
were  three  forms  of  punishment  at  Eton.  First  of  all,  one 
could  get  a  yellow  ticket,  which  meant  one  had  to  do  a  punish- 
ment of  some  written  kind  and  get  the  ticket  signed  by  one's 
tutor.  We  did  not  much  like  leaving  out  the  yellow  ticket  in  a 
prominent  place  for  my  tutor  to  see  when  he  came  round  in  the 
evening.  If  matters  went  further,  one  was  reported  to  the 
Headmaster  and  received  a  white  ticket.  The  white  ticket  was 
in  force  for  a  week.  During  that  week  have  was  stopped, 
and  if  the  slightest  complaint  was  made  by  anyone,  it  meant 


no  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

being  complained  of  to  the  Headmaster  a  second  time  and  a 
flogging  by  the  Headmaster.  I  was  complained  of  by  Mr. 
Ploetz  to  the  Headmaster.  As  I  guessed,  the  other  masters 
took  this  far  from  seriously.  "  What  have  you  been  doing  to 
Mr.  Ploetz  ?  "  said  my  tutor.  What  I  had  been  guilty  of  was 
overt  rowdyism,  combined  with  prolonged  and  unbearable 
impertinence,  which  if  done  to  any  other  master  would  have 
been  taken  very  seriously  indeed.  "  What  have  you  been 
doing  to  Mr.  Ploetz  ?  "  said  another  master  to  me,  with  a  laugh, 
when  he  met  me  in  the  street.  I  received  a  white  ticket,  but 
I  got  through  the  week  without  further  complaints,  and  I  was 
never  complained  of  again. 

When  I  was  in  fifth  form,  the  school  library  became  a 
favourite  haunt  of  mine,  and  Mr.  Burcher,  the  librarian,  a  special 
friend.  Mr.  Burcher  was  a  little  dapper  man,  who  was  pained 
when  we  jumped  over  the  tables,  a  favourite  game  of  mine,  or 
if  we  threw  the  books  about.  "  Is  it  a  joke,"  he  would  ask 
plaintively,  "or  is  it  an  insult  ?  "  But  in  that  library,  during 
my  last  year  at  Eton,  I  made  by  myself  the  discovery  of  English 
poetry,  and  read  the  works  of  Shelley  in  the  three  little  volumes 
of  the  second  Moxon  edition  of  1850,  and  the  poems  of  Keats  in 
Lord  Houghton's  one-volume  edition.  On  Sundays  I  used  to  go, 
rich  with  my  new  discoveries,  to  Norman  Tower,  and  compare 
notes  with  Betty  Ponsonby,  who  knew  reams  of  English  poetry 
by  heart,  and  we  would  read  each  last  new  favourite  poem. 
There  is  no  joy  in  the  world  like  this  to  discover  these  things 
for  the  first  time.  The  shabby  little  Keats  and  Shelley,  the 
green  volumes  of  Tennyson,  the  three  dark  volumes  of  Matthew 
Arnold — what  mines  of  fairy  treasure  they  represented  ! 

I  made  friends,  through  one  of  his  pupils,  with  Arthur  Ben- 
son. I  had  been  in  his  division  twice,  but  I  had  never  known 
him  well.  One  of  the  Coventrys,  Willie  Coventry,  was  his 
pupil,  and  he  told  Arthur  Benson  that  I  liked  books  and  poetry, 
and  had  written  a  novel  called  Elvira,  which  was  true  (only  it 
had  to  be  destroyed  after  I  had  measles),  and  was  going  to  write 
the  libretto  of  an  opera  of  which  he,  Coventry,  was  to  write  the 
music.  He  was  not  really  musical,  and  did  not  know  a  note 
of  music  technically.  He  also  intended,  when  I  first  made  his 
acquaintance,  to  write  a  life  of  Mary  Stuart ;  but  this,  like  the 
opera,  never  got  far. 

Arthur  Benson  was  most  kind  and  interested,  and  it  was 


ETON  in 

arranged  that  on  Sunday  aftn  noons  we  should  meet  in  his  rooms 
and  read  out  poetry.  Arnold  Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's 
son,  who  was  in  College,  joined  us.  We  read  out  poetry;  if 
we  had  written  something  ourselves,  we  Left  it  with  Arthur 
Benson  for  a  week,  he  told  us  what  he  thought  about  it  next 
time.  I  showed  him  a  Fairies'  Chorus  from  my  libretto.  He 
said  :  "  I  don't  like  those  galloping  metres,  but  I  see  you  have 
got  a  good  vocabulary."  My  next  effort  was  an  Ode  on  the 
Tercentenary  of  Eton  College,  in  which  Fielding  was  mentioned 
as  "the  great  wielder  of  the  painting  pen."  "  Have  you  read 
Fielding  ?  "  asked  Arthur  Benson.  I  had  not  read  Fielding. 
"  I  see,"  said  Arthur  Benson,  "  you  take  him  on  trust." 

There  was  at  that  time  a  newspaper  edited  by  two  of  the 
boys,  called  the  Mayfly.  I  sent  them  my  poem  on  Eton  College, 
but  they  wisely  refused  it.  The  Mayfly,  edited  by  Ramsay,  was 
an  amusing  paper,  but  not  quite  as  good  as  the  Parachute, 
which  had  come  out  the  year  before,  and  was  edited  by  Carr 
Bosanquet  and  others.  This  was  a  singularly  brilliant  news- 
paper. It  only  had  three  numbers,  but  they  were  most  success- 
ful. There  was  at  the  same  time  an  exceedingly  serious  news- 
paper called  The  Eton  Review,  edited,  I  think,  by  Beauchamp, 
which  had  articles  about  the  Baconian  theory,  and  other  rather 
heavy  topics.  During  my  last  summer  a  newspaper  which  had 
twenty  editors,  but  only  one  number,  came  out,  called  The 
Students'  Humour.  There  was  also  a  book  published  in  1891, 
called  Kcatc's  Lane  Papers,  in  which  there  is  an  excellent  poem 
by  J.  K.  Stephen,  which  has  never  been  republished,  called 
"  The  Song  of  the  Scug."     It  begins  : 

"  There  was  a  little  scug 

Who  sat  upon  a  rug, 
With  a  <lull   and  empty  brain. 

And  would  show  his  indecision 

In  a  twopenny  division, 
With   a  friend   of  the  same   low  strain. 
\nl   would  cat   a  lot  of  cherries  and   sec  a  lot  of  cricket, 
Till   his  lips   and    his  lingers  were   as  sti<  kv   as   (he   mi  kct, 
Bnt   .it    last    h<-  came  to  be  a  bald  old   man 
Who   talked    about  as  wildly   as   a   bald    man   can. 

And   he  said,   by  Cad  ; 

When   1   was  a  lad, 
And   the   very  best  dry  bob  alive, 

1   should    have   made   a   million, 

l'.ut    a    man    in    the    Pavilion 
Was  killed  by  my  first  hard  drive." 


ii2  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

J.  K.  Stephen  used  often  to  come  down  to  Eton,  dressed 
always  in  slippers,  a  dark  blue  flannel  blazer,  and  a  dirty  pink 
cap  on  the  back  of  his  head ;  and  thus  dressed,  and  reading  a 
small  book,  I  saw  him  serenely  and  unconsciously  walk  across 
the  pitch  during  the  Winchester  match. 

Arthur  Benson  stimulated  our  reading  tremendously,  and 
we  were  startled  and  interested  by  his  frank  heresies.  He 
said  he  did  not  care  for  Milton's  Lycidas.  He  wished  Shake- 
speare had  been  a  modern  and  had  written  novels.  He  was  in- 
different to  Shelley.  He  loathed  Byron,  but  was  none  the  less 
impressed,  when  one  Sunday  Arnold  Ward  read  out  the  de- 
scription of  the  battle  of  Talavera  (Childe  Harold,  I.  xxxviii.), 
and  he  admitted  it  was  moving.  He  disliked  Carlyle,  Ruskin, 
and  Thackeray.  On  the  other  hand,  he  introduced  us  to 
Matthew  Arnold,  Rossetti,  FitzGerald,  and  many  others,  and 
encouraged  us  to  go  on  liking  anything  we  did  like.  By  this 
time  I  had  read  many  novels — Thackeray's  Vanity  Fair,  Pick- 
wick, a  good  deal  of  Scott  (I  was  given  the  Waverley  Novels 
for  Christmas  1889),  George  Eliot's  Adam  Bede,  The  Mill  on  the 
Floss,  and  quantities  of  poetry.  Betty  Ponsonby  gave  me 
Swinburne's  Atalanta  in  Calydon,  but  explained  to  me  that 
the  denunciations  of  God  in  it  only  applied  to  the  Greek  gods, 
and  she  and  my  Aunt  M'aim^e  both  changed  the  subject  when  I 
suggested  reading  Swinburne's  Poems  and  Ballads. 

Willie  Coventry  and  I  found  out  that  there  was  a  competition 
going  on  at  this  time  in  a  magazine  called  Atalanta  for  who 
should  write  the  best  essay  in  500  words.  You  were  allowed 
to  choose  your  own  subject.  Willie  Coventry  won  it  one  month 
by  writing  an  essay  on  Dr.  Schliemann's  Excavations,  a  subject 
suggested  to  him  by  Arthur  Benson.  The  next  month  I  com- 
peted, and  chose  as  my  subject  a  poem  by  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
called  "  For  Annie,"  and  I  won  the  prize  too. 

In  the  summer  of  1890  I  went  to  stay  at  the  Coventrys' 
place  at  Croome  Court  in  Worcestershire,  and  Willie  Coventry 
came  to  Membland  later  in  the  same  summer.  The  libretto  I 
was  writing  for  him  never  got  further  than  a  few  lyrics,  and  his 
score  never  got  further  than  a  few  bars  and  a  triumphal  march, 
which  I  composed,  and  even  played  at  one  of  Miss  Copeman's 
afternoon  parties.     I  can  still  play  it  now,  if  pressed. 

I  had  a  faint  hope  at  one  time  that  I  might  be  able  to  get 
into  the  Boats.     Arthur  Benson  had  taken  me  out  one  day  down 


ETON  113 

stream  and  advised  me  to  try.  I  could  u>\\  well  enough  on  the 
stroke  side,  but  not  so  well  on  the  bow  side  of  the  boat.  I  put 
my  name  down  for  Novice  Eights,  in  whii  b  boys  were  tried,  and 
one  evening  I  started  out  full  of  hope.  Unfortunately  I  was  told 
to  row  bow  in  the  boat.     A  tall  Colli  id  up  in  the  stern  of 

the  boat  to  coach  us.  No  sooner  had  we  started  than  there  was  a 
loud  call :  "  Keep  time,  Bow — keep  time,  Bowl  "  and  we  had  not 
gone  much  farther  than  the  Brocas  when  I  caught  so  violent  a 
crab  that  the  coach  fell  into  the  water,  the  boat  was  partially 
submerged,  and  we  had  to  go  back,  some  of  us  swimming.  I  was 
never  allowed  to  row  in  company  again,  and  earned  the  reputation 
of  being  the  only  person  who  had  ever  swamped  a  Novice  Eight. 
In  the  autumn  of  1890  Hugo  and  I  went  up  to  London  for 
long  leave.  My  father  and  mother  were  staying  at  my  sister 
Elizabeth's  house  in  Grosvenor  Place,  and  there  we  heard  about 
the  financial  crisis  in  Baring  Brothers,  which  had  nearly  ended 
in  a  great  disaster.  When  we  went  back  to  Membland  at 
Christmas  everything  was  different.  There  was  no  Christmas 
party,  and  the  household  was  going  through  a  process  of  gradual 
dissolution.  Cherie  was  leaving  us,  the  stables  were  empty,  and 
the  old  glory  of  Membland  had  gone  for  ever. 

All  through  the  next  year  I  was  engrossed  with  the  discoveries 
I  was  making  in  English  literature.  In  the  summer  I  sent  a 
poem  to  Temple  Bar,  then  edited  by  George  Smith,  and  to  my 
great  surprise  it  was  printed,  and  I  received  a  cheque  for  a 
guinea.  During  that  same  summer  I  had  a  little  book  of  poems 
privately  printed  at  Eton,  called  Damozel  Blanche,  consisting 
of  ballads  and  lyrics. 

I  was  now  a  member  of  the  House  Debating  Society,  in  which 
we  used  to  have  heated  discussions  on  such  subjects  as  whether 
sports  were  brutalising  or  not,  whether  conscription  was  a  good 
thing,  whether  General  Booth's  scheme  was  a  sound  one,  and 
whether  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  had  been  improperly  beheaded. 

There  was  another  debating  society  founded  before  I  left 
Eton,  called  Le  Cerclc  des  Dcbais,  in  which  we  made  speeches  in 
French,  and  I  remember  M.  Una  making  a  passionate  speech 
in  favour  of  England  relinquishing  her  hold  upon  Egypt.  I 
spoke  several  timi  -  .it  this  debating  society,  and  in  the  report 
on  the  debate  as  to  whether  Montr  Carlo  should  be  allow*  d  to 
exist,  it  is  recorded  that:  "  M.  Baring  croyail  que  c'&ail  an 
mauvais  endroil  mais  que  cela  ne  devrail  pas  §tre  supprim< 


ii4  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

The  summer  of  the  Eton  Tercentenary,  1891,  was  great  fun, 
especially  the  concert,  when  Hubert  Parry's  beautiful  setting 
to  Swinburne's  "  Ode  "  was  performed.  I  sang  among  the  bari- 
tones. My  mother  came  down  for  the  concert,  and  Hubert 
Parry  conducted  himself.  There  was  an  interesting  exhibition 
in  the  school  hall,  and  it  was  there  that  I  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Mrs.  Cornish.  My  Aunt  M'aimee  introduced  me  to  her,  and 
I  soon  became  a  great  friend  of  the  Cornish  family,  and  was 
invited  by  them  to  go  out  on  water-parties  down  stream  to  the 
Bells  of  Ousley  and  Runnymede,  and  to  have  supper  with  them 
afterwards.  I  enjoyed  these  water-parties  as  much  as  anything 
at  Eton. 

In  the  summer  holidays  of  1891  I  went  to  stay  with  Ch^rie, 
who  had  left  us.  She  lived  with  her  friend,  Miss  Charlesworth, 
in  a  little  house  called  Waterlooville,  near  Cosham,  in  Hants, 
and  realised  the  dream  of  her  life,  namely,  to  have  a  large  garden 
of  her  own  full  of  hollyhocks  and  sunflowers  and  sweet  peas. 

In  the  Michaelmas  half  of  1891  I  competed  for  the  Prince 
Consort's  French  prize.  I  had  already  done  so  the  last  year, 
but  I  was  then  too  young  to  compete  with  sixth-form  boys,  who 
were  much  older,  and  I  was  not  expected  to  get  a  place,  but 
I  came  out  third.  This  year  it  was  my  great  ambition  to  get 
the  prize.  I  thought  of  nothing  else.  We  had  to  read  several 
books — Moliere's  L'Avare,  Alfred  de  Vigny's  Cinq  Mars,  Taine's 
Voyage  aux  Pyrenees,  Victor  Hugo's  Ruy  Bias,  and  Brachet's 
Grammaire  Historique.  Besides  this,  we  were  examined  in  un- 
seen translations  from  and  into  French,  and  we  had  to  write  a 
French  essay.  We  were  examined  by  a  Monsieur  Hammonet. 
I  worked  extremely  hard  for  this  examination,  and  had  extra 
lessons  in  the  evenings  from  M.  Hua.  So  did  the  other  com- 
petitors. My  serious  rival  was  Grand  d'Hauteville,  who  I  think 
was  a  French  Canadian,  and  who  spoke  French  fluently.  The 
examination  took  five  days,  and  as  it  went  on  I  became  more 
and  more  convinced  that  I  had  not  done  well  and  could  not 
possibly  win  the  prize.  When  it  was  over,  there  was  a  long 
interval  of  agonising  suspense  before  the  result  was  made 
known. 

One  afternoon  I  received  a  summons  from  my  Uncle  Henry 
Ponsonby  to  go  and  see  him  at  Windsor.  I  found  him,  not  at 
Norman  Tower,  but  in  a  room  somewhere  in  the  Castle,  and  he 
told  me  that  the  Queen  had  just  received  the  news  of  the  result 


ETON  115 

of  the  Prince  Consort's  prize.  She  was  the  first  to  get  this 
news  ;  the  news  was  that  I  was  first  and  had  got  the  prize.  I 
at  once  sent  a  telegram  to  my  mother  and  to  Cherie,  and  walked 
back  to  Eton,  drunk  with  triumph  and  delight  to  tell  my  tutor. 

The  news  was  not  published  for  some  days,  and  I  told 
nobody,  I  think,  except  my  tutor  and  Dunglass.  But  it  came 
out  at  last,  and  was  published  ill  the  Times  and  on  the  board  at 
Eton.  My  father  and  mother  came  down  to  see  me,  and  my 
father  gave  me  his  own  watch  :  a  Breguet,  the  Demidofl  Breguct. 
It  was  then  settled  that  I  was  not  to  go  back  to  Eton,  but  to 
goto  Germany  to  learn  German  and  prepare  for  the  Diplomatic 
Service  competitive  examination. 

Dunglass  went  on  messing  with  Hugo  and  myself  until  I  left 
Eton.  We  had  three  or  four  fags  and  they  bored  us,  and  we 
could  never  find  things  for  them  to  do.  Dunglass  developed 
into  a  fine  Eton  football  player,  and  got  his  House  Colours  and 
then  his  Field  Colours.  He  was  a  new  boy  the  same  half  as  I 
was,  and  our  alliance  lasted  unbroken  through  my  Eton  life. 
One  half  we  learnt  bird-stuffing  together,  and  when  our  mess 
funds  used  to  run  short  Dunglass  used  to  say  :  "  I've  marked  off 
an  uncle,"  and  one  of  his  many  uncles  used  to  come  down  and 
tip  us.  Our  mess  was  a  lively  one,  and  when  there  was  a  whole 
holiday  on  Friday,  which  necessitated  Friday's  work  being 
done  on  Thursday,  an  arrangement  which  used  to  be  called 
doing  Friday's  business,  we  used  to  sing  in  a  loud  chorus  a  song, 
the  words  of  which  were  : 

"  Why  not  to  morrow  ? 
Why  not  to-morrow  ? 
Why,  because  to-morrow  is  to-day  !  " 

The  greatest  excitements  of  Eton  life  were,  I  always  thought. 
the  House  football  matches  for  the  House  Cup.  There  was  the 
Eton  and  Harrow  match,  of  course,  but  while  I  was  at  Eton 
these  matches  were  unexciting  and  Eton  never  won,  and  Dun- 
glass and  I  agreed  that  there  were  few  things  we  enjoyed  more 
than  driving  away  from  Lord's.  Nothing  surpassed  the  excite- 
ment of  the  House  matches.  One  year,  I  think  it  was  the 
year  before  I  left,  we  were  supposed  to  have  a  small  chance  of 
getting  beyond  first  ties,  but  our  House  played  so  well  together 
that  they  got  into  the  ante-final.  They  then  drew  Cornish's, 
who  had  a  strong  side  of  powerfully  built  boys.     An  epic  match 


n6  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

followed.  Dumford's  played  as  if  inspired ;  they  got  three 
rouges  to  nil,  but  failed  to  convert  them  into  goals,  and  the 
game  was  almost  over.  Then,  in  the  last  five  minutes  of  the 
game,  Cornish's  scored  a  rouge,  and  being  far  the  heavier  team 
converted  it  into  a  goal,  and  won  the  match.  Never  was  there 
a  more  exciting  match. 

During  my  last  year  my  chief  friends  in  the  House,  besides 
Dunglass,  were  Leslie  Hamilton,  who  went  into  the  Coldstream 
Guards  and  was  killed  in  the  war,  and  Crum  ;  and  outside  the 
House,  Gerald  Cornish.     He,  too,  killed  in  the  war. 

Arthur  Benson  was  my  greatest  friend  among  the  masters, 
and  I  used  constantly  to  have  tea  with  him,  and  have  long  talks 
about  books  and  every  other  sort  of  thing.  My  last  half  I  was 
up  to  Mr.  Luxmoore,  who  was  to  be  a  lifelong  friend. 

The  last  days  of  my  last  half  were  like  a  dream.  I  was 
hardly  conscious  of  the  reality  of  things,  and  I  did  not  yet 
fully  realise  that  my  Eton  life  was  coming  to  an  end.  There 
was  no  more  work  to  do.  The  battle  for  the  Prince  Consort's 
prize  had  been  fought  and  won.  It  was,  as  Eton  triumphs  go, 
a  small  triumph — small  indeed  compared  with  such  glories  as 
surround  those  who  get  the  Newcastle,  stroke  the  Eight,  or  play 
in  the  Field,  or  at  Lord's  in  the  Eleven ;  but  such  as  it  was,  it 
gave  me  as  much  joy  and  triumph  as  my  being  could  hold,  and 
nothing  in  after  life  could  ever  touch  the  rapture  of  the  moment 
when  I  knew  I  had  got  it. 

Now  there  was  nothing  left  to  do  but  to  make  every  moment 
seem  as  long  as  possible  and  to  say  good-bye.  Good-bye  to  the 
School  Library,  my  favourite  haunt  at  Eton,  the  scene  of  so 
much  hurried,  scrambled  work,  of  such  minute  consultations 
of  ecclesiastical  authorities  for  Sunday  Questions,  or  of  trans- 
lations of  Virgil  and  Horace,  and  the  Greeks  ;  of  such  long 
and  serious  discussions  of  future  and  present  plans  and  literary 
topics,  schemes  and  dreams,  poems,  plays,  operas,  novels, 
romances,  with  Willie  Coventry  and  Gerald  Cornish.  Good- 
bye to  the  leather  tables  where  numberless  poems  had  been 
copied  out  on  the  grey  Library  foolscap  paper,  which  for  some 
reason  we  used  to  call  electric-light  paper  ;  tables  over  which 
we  had  leapt  in  wild  steeplechases,  while  Burcher  protested, 
where  so  many  construes  had  been  prepared,  and  so  many 
punishments  scribbled,  and  where  the  great  poets  of  England 
had  been  surreptitiously  discovered,  and  the  accents  of  Milton 


ETON  117 

and  Keats  overheard  for  the  ln-t  time,  and  the  visions  of 
Shelley  and  Coleridge  discerned  through  the  dust  of  the  daily 
work  and  above  the  din  of  chattering  boys.  Good-bye  to  the 
playing  fields,  to  South  Meadow,  the  Field,  to  Upper  School, 
and  to  Williams'  inner  room,  full  of  prizes  and  redolent  with  the 
smell  of  tree-calf  and  morocco,  where  1  had  so  often  dreamt  of 
getting  prizes  and  wondered  what  I  should  choose  if  I  ever 
managed  to  get  the  Prince  Consort's  prize.  Good-bye  to  the 
Brocas,  to  Upper  Hope  and  Athens  and  Romn<  y  Weir, 

"  Where  the  lock-stream  pushes. 
Where  the  cygnet  feeds," 

and  to  all  the  reaches  of  the  river.  Good-bye  to  Windsor  and 
Norman  Tower,  and  to  the  chimes  of  the  inexorable  school 
clock  ;  to  my  little  room  with  its  sock  cupboard,  bureau,  and 
ottoman,  to  Little  Brown's  and  to  Phoebe,  and  then  to  one's 
friends  :  to  my  Dame  and  to  my  tutor,  and  to  Arthur  Benson, 
and  the  unforgettable  readings  and  talks  in  bis  hoc 

I  went  to  Williams'  to  choose  my  prize,  and  while  I  was  there 
Mr.  Cornish  strolled  in,  and  seeing  what  I  was  doing,  he  said: 
"Of  course  you  will  choose  a  lot  of  little  books— boys  always 
do — but  what  you  ought  to  do  is  to  get  Littre's  Dictionary  or 
all  Sainte  Beuve."  This  was  asking  too  much  in  the  way  of 
sense,  and  I  compromised.  I  chose  a  Shakespeare  in  twelve 
volumes,  bound  in  tree  calf,  a  Milton  in  three  volumes,  and  a  few 
other  small  books.  My  tutor  gave  me  two  volumes  of  Raskin  ; 
Mr.  Luxmoore  gave  me  a  volume  of  Ruskin  as  well.  Arthur 
Benson  gave  me  Ionica.  Just  before  leaving  I  had  the  honour 
of  dining  with  my  tutor,  which  made  one  feel  already  as  if 
one  was  entering  a  new  world.  The  hour  struck  when  I  was 
actually  leaving  Eton.  Up  to  that  last  moment  all  had  been 
•  xi  itcment  and  fun,  but  when  I  was  actually  Sitting  in  the 
train  and  crossing  the  fifteen  arches  railway  bridge,  and  Windsoi 
Castle  and  the  trees  of  the  Brocas  came  into  sight,  the  whole  of 
the  past,  the  Eton  past,  surged  up  and  overwhelmed  me  lik- 
flood,  and  I  realised  in  that  last  fleeting  glimpse  of  the  tn 
the  river,  and  the  grey  Castle  all  that  Eton  life  had  meant,  and 
what  it  was  that  in  leaving  Eton  I  was  saying  good-bye  to. 


CHAPTER    VII 
GERMANY 

I    SPENT  the   Christmas  holidays,  after  leaving  Eton,  at 
Membland.     I  had  had  another  little   book   of    poems 
printed  privately  as  a  Christmas  present  for  my  mother, 
and  I  was  still  making  discoveries  in  English  literature,  and 
of  these  the  most  important  of  all :  Shakespeare  and  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost.     We  travelled  up  in  January  to  London,  and  it 
was  settled  that  I  was  to  go  to  Germany  to  learn  German.     My 
father  heard  of  a  family  in  Hanover  where  English  boys  were 
taken,  but  there  was  no  room  there.     Someone  then  gave  him 
the  address  of  a  Dr.  Timme  who  lived  at   Hildesheim,  near 
Hanover,  and  also  took  in  Englishmen.     It  was  settled  that  I 
was  to  go  there.     I  started  at  the  end  of  the  month,  and  at 
Victoria  Station  I  met  Hubert  Cornish,  who  was  going  to  Dresden 
to   learn    German.     We   travelled   together   to    Hanover   via 
Flushing,  and  we  were  both  of  us  seasick,  and  both  swore  that 
we  would  never  cross  the  Channel  again.     We  arrived  at  Hanover 
the  next  evening  and  stayed  at   Kasten's  Hotel.     The  next 
morning  we  went  on  by  the  same  train.    I  got  out  at  Hildesheim, 
and  Hubert  Cornish  went  on  to  Dresden.     Hubert  Cornish  had 
just  left  Eton,  but  he  was  older  than  I  was,  and  I  had  only  seen 
him  in  the  distance,  and  at  his  father's  house  at  picnics.     We 
made  great  friends  at  once.     Hildesheim  was  a  charming  little 
old  town.     One  part  of  it  was  really  old,  and  straight  out  of  a 
fairy-tale,  with  houses  with  high  gabled  roofs,  and  mediaeval 
carvings  on  them,  and  there  were  many  quaint  and  interest- 
ing churches,  including  the  old  cathedral  with  its  ravishingly 
beautiful  cloister  behind  it,  and  a  rose-tree  said  to  be  a  thousand 
years  old.     Dr.  Timme  had  a  small  house  in  the  Weissenburger- 
Strasse  on  the  edge  of  the  modern  town.     It  was  a  two-storied, 
square,  grey  house  with  a  flat  roof,  looking  out  on  to  the  street 
on  one  side,  and  on  to  a  garden  at  the  back.    I  was  received  by 

118 


GERMANY  119 

Frau  Doktor  Timme.  Her  husband  was  a  master  at  the  Real 
Gymnasium,  and  he  was  at  school  when  I  arrived.  I  could  not 
speak  a  word  of  German.  It  was  a  curious  sensation  to  live 
with  a  family  and  partake  of  their  daily  life  and  not  to  be  able 
to  understand  a  word  they  said  ;  to  go  out  for  walks  and  pre- 
tend to  be  joining  in  and  following  a  conversation  when  one  had 
not  the  remotest  idea  of  the  drift  of  it.  I  started  lessons  at  once, 
and  bought  a  small  Heine,  which  I  used  to  read  to  myself,  and  I 
soon  understood  that.  It  was  bitterly  cold.  There  was  still 
snow  on  the  ground. 

There  were  three  children  in  the  house  :  a  dear  little  girl 
called  Aenna,  and  a  little  boy  called  Kurt,  and  an  older  boy, 
about  twelve,  called  Atho.  Dr.  Timme  had  two  spinster  sisters 
who  lived  in  a  house  not  far  off  with  another  old  lady  who  was 
called  Die  Alte  Tante,  and  Frau  Timme  had  a  brother  who  was 
called  Onkel  Adolf,  and  who  had  fought  in  the  Franco-Prussian 
War,  and  her  mother  was  alive. 

I  found  life  interesting  in  spite  of  not  understanding  the 
language.  In  the  early  morning  I  used  to  go  downstairs  and 
have  coffee  and  Apfelgelee.  We  had  Miltagcsscn  at  one,  and 
after  that  the  household  indulged  in  a  MittagsckL'ifchen.  At 
four  in  the  afternoon  we  again  drank  coffee  and  ate  Apfelgelee, 
and  we  had  supper  at  half-past  seven,  at  which  there  would 
generally  be  some  delicacy  like  Bratkartoffel  or  Leberuurst  or 
Hdringsalat.  Many  English  boys  had  been  there  before  ; 
and  Frau  Timme  told  me  that  we  English,  as  a  rule,  disliked 
German  dishes.  The  first  German  phrase  I  remember  under- 
standing was  when  Frau  Timme  announced  to  one  of  the  aunts 
a  surprising  fact  about  me  that  I  ate  everything  ("  Er  isst 
alles  ").  In  the  evening  the  aunts  and  other  people  used  to 
visit  us,  and  sometimes  we  would  go  to  a  concert.  The  Timmes 
were  great  friends  with  the  family  of  Herr  Musik-Direktm 
Nick,  who  was  a  musician,  and  all  his  family  played  ;  they  had 
entrancing  musical  evenings  of  trios  and  duets  for  violin,  piano- 
forte, and  viola.  Herr  Musik-Direktor  Nick's  nephew,  Wunni- 
bald,  Rave  me  lessons  on  the  pianoforte.  I  had  German  Lessons 
with  Dr.  Timme. 

In  the  afternoon,  I  used  to  go  for  long  walks  with  Dr.  Timme 
and  his  brother-in-law,  and  we  walked  to  the  Galgenberg,  to  the 
Steinberg,  and  the  Moritzberg,  rather  bleak  lulls  of  fir-tr< 
stopping  as  a  rule  at  a  small  Wirtshaus,  where  we  used  to  drink 


120  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

beer  or  coffee.  In  the  house  there  was  a  small  drawing-room 
downstairs,  where  the  guest  of  honour  always  sat  on  the  sofa. 
A  smart  drawing-room  or  the  Gute  Stube,  which  was  only  opened 
on  rare  and  state  occasions.  Frau  Timme  told  me  one  day  that 
she  knew  this  room  was  a  useless  extravagance,  but  it  gave  her, 
she  said,  such  great  pleasure  that  she  could  not  sacrifice  it. 
Upstairs,  Dr.  Timme  had  a  sitting-room,  where  I  took  my  lessons 
with  him,  and  I  had  a  sitting-room  where  I  did  my  work.  After 
about  a  month  I  could  understand  what  was  being  said,  and  in 
about  two  months'  time  I  could  make  myself  understood  and 
carry  on  a  conversation.  I  used  sometimes  to  go  to  the  theatre 
at  Hanover,  coming  back  by  train  afterwards.  The  first  time 
I  saw  Schiller's  Wallenstein's  Tod  I  did  not  understand  a  word  of 
it.  One  night  I  went  to  hear  Tannhduser.  Wagner  was  only 
a  name  to  me,  and  meant  something  vaguely  noisy.  I  had  no 
idea  he  wrote  about  interesting  or  romantic  subjects.  I  had  no 
idea  of  what  Tannhduser  was  about.  I  went  expecting  a  tedious 
evening  of  dry  and  ultra -classical,  unintelligible  music.  As 
soon  as  the  orchestra  began  the  overture,  I  was  overwhelmed.  I 
did  not  know  that  music  was  capable  of  so  tremendous  an  effect. 
The  Venusberg  music  and  the  "  Pilgrims'  Chorus  "  opened  a  new 
world,  and  I  was  so  excited  afterwards  that  I  could  not  sleep  a 
wink.  I  was  stunned  by  these  magnetic  effects  of  sound. 
Curiously  enough,  I  left  it  at  that,  and  made  no  further  effort  to 
go  and  hear  any  more  Wagner.  I  was  almost  afraid  of  repeating 
the  experience  for  fear  of  being  disappointed,  and  the  next  time 
I  went  to  the  opera  it  was  to  hear  Verdi's  Otello. 

I  happened  to  mention  casually  that  it  was  my  birthday  on 
27th  April,  and  when  I  came  down  that  morning  I  found  in  the 
drawing-room  a  beautiful  cake  or  Apfeltorte  with  eighteen 
candles  burning  on  it  and  a  present  from  every  member  of  the 
family.  I  could  talk  German  quite  fluently  by  this  time.  Frau 
Timme  suggested  that  I  should  make  the  acquaintance  of  some 
of  the  boys  at  the  schools.  There  were  two  large  schools  at 
Hildesheim,  a  Gymnasium,  and  a  Real  Gymnasium.  The  Real 
Gymnasium  concentrated  on  the  modern.  The  Gymnasium 
was  more  classical  in  its  programme.  For  the  purpose  of  getting 
to  know  the  boys  I  was  introduced  to  a  grown-up  boy  called 
Braun,  who  was,  I  think,  a  native  of  Hildesheim.  Most  of  the 
boys  at  both  schools  came  from  different  parts  of  Germany  and 
lived  en  pension  in  different  families.     The  boys  from  both 


GERMANY  121 

schools  used  to  meet  in  the  evening  before  sapper  at  a  restaurant 

called  Hasse,  where  a  special  room  w.i  kept  for  them.  Braun 
was  an  earnest  and  extremely  well-educated  youth,  a  student  of 
geology.  Before  I  was  taken  to  Hasse,  he  said  I  must  be 
instructed  in  the  rules  of  the  Bicrkoynmcnt}  that  is  to  say,  the 
rules  for  drinking  beer  in  company,  whi<  h  were,  as  I  found  cut 
afterwards,  the  basis  of  the  social  system.  These  rule-  were 
intricate,  and  when  Braun  explained  them  to  me,  which  he  did 
with  the  utmost  thoroughness,  the  explanation  taking  nearly 
two  hours,  I  did  not  know  what  it  was  all  about.  I  did  not 
know  it  had  anything  to  do  with  drinking  beer.  I  afterwards 
learned,  by  the  evidence  of  my  senses  and  by  experience,  the 
numerous  and  various  points  of  this  complicated  ritual,  but  the 
first  evening  I  was  introduced  to  Hasse  I  was  bewildered  by 
finding  a  crowd  of  grown-up  boys  seated  at  a  table  ;  each  one 
introduced  himself  to  me  by  standing  to  attention  and  saying 
his  name  ("  Mcin  Name  ist  So-and-so").  After  which  they  sat 
down  and  seemed  to  be  engaged  in  a  game  of  cross-purposes. 

The  main  principles  which  underlay  this  form  of  social 
intercourse  were  these.  You  first  of  all  ordered  a  half-litre 
of  beer,  stating  whether  you  wanted  light  or  dark  beer  {dunhlcs 
or  helles).  It  was  given  to  you  in  a  glass  mug  with  a  metal  top. 
This  mug  had  to  remain  closed  whatever  happened,  otherwise 
the  others  put  this  mug  on  yours,  and  you  had  to  pay  for  every 
mug  which  was  piled  on  your  own.  Having  received  your 
beer,  you  must  not  drink  it  quietly  by  yourself,  when  you  were 
thirsty  ;  but  every  single  draught  had  to  be  taken  with  a 
purpose,  and  directed  towards  someone  else,  and  accompanied 
by  a  formula.  The  formula  was  an  opening,  and  called  for 
the  correct  answer,  which  was  either  final  and  ended  the  matter, 
or  which  was  of  a  kind  to  provoke  a  counter-move,  in  the  form 
of  a  further  formula,  which,  in  its  turn,  necessitated  a  final 
answer.  You  were,  in  fact,  engaged  in  toasting  each  other 
according  to  system.  When  you  had  a  fresh  mug,  with  foam 
on  the  top  of  it,  that  was  called  die  Blumc,  and  yon  had  to 
choose  someone  who  was  in  the  same  situation  ;  someone  who 
had  a  Blumc.  You  then  said  his  name,  not  his  real  name  bat 
his  beer  name,  which  was  generally  a  monosyllable  like  Pfiff 
(my  beer  name  was   Hash,  pronounced    Hush),  and   yon   said 

1  I  don't  know  the  correct  spelling  of  this  word  and  it  is  not  in  the 
dictionary. 


122  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

to  him  :  "Prosit  Blutne."  His  answer  to  this  was  :  "Prosit," 
and  you  both  drank.  To  pretend  to  drink  and  not  drink  was 
an  infringement  of  the  rules.  If  he  had  no  beer  at  the  time 
he  would  say  so  ("  Ich  habe  keinen  Stoff"),  but  would  be  careful 
to  return  you  your  Blume  as  soon  as  he  received  it,  saying : 
"  Ich  komme  die  Blume  nach  "  ("  I  drink  back  to  you  your 
Blume  ").  Then,  perhaps,  having  disposed  of  the  Blume,  you 
singled  out  someone  else,  or  someone  perhaps  singled  you  out, 
and  said  :  "Ich  komme  Ihnen  Etwas"  ("I  drink  something  to 
you  ").  When  you  got  to  know  someone  well,  he  suggested 
that  you  should  drink  Bruderschaft  with  him.  This  you  did 
by  entwining  your  arm  under  his  arm,  draining  a  whole  glass, 
and  then  saying  :  "  Prosit  Bruder."  After  that  you  called  each 
other  "  Du."  Very  well.  After  having  said  "  Ich  komme  Ihnen  " 
or  "  Ich  komme  Dir  etwas,"  he,  in  the  space  of  three  beer  minutes, 
which  were  equivalent  to  four  ordinary  minutes,  was  obliged 
to  answer.  He  might  either  say:  "  Ich  komme  Dir  nach"  or 
"  Ich  komme  nach  "  ("I  drink  back ").  That  settled  that 
proceeding.  Or  he  might  prolong  the  interchange  of  toasts  by 
saying  :  "  Uebers  Kreuz,"  in  which  case  you  had  to  wait  a  little 
and  say:  "  Unters  Kreuz,"  and  every  time  the  one  said  this, 
the  other  in  drinking  had  to  say  :  "Prosit."  Then  the  person 
who  had  said  "  Uebers  Kreuz "  had  the  last  word,  and  had 
to  say:  "Ich  komme  definitiv  nach"  ("I  drink  back  to  you 
finally  "),  and  that  ended  the  matter.  If  you  had  very  little 
beer  left  in  your  mug  you  chose  someone  else  who  was  in  the 
same  predicament,  and  said:  " Prosit  Rest."  It  was  uncivil  if  you 
had  a  rest  to  choose  someone  who  had  plenty  of  beer  left.  If 
you  wanted  to  honour  someone  or  to  pay  him  a  compliment,  you 
said  "  Speziell"  after  your  toast,  which  meant  the  other  person 
was  not  obliged  to  drink  back.  You  could  also  say  ;  "  Ich  komme 
Dir  einen  halben  "  ("  I  drink  you  a  half  glass  "),  or  even  "  einen 
Ganzen  "  ("  a  whole  glass  ").  The  other  person  could  then  double 
you  by  saying  :  "  Prosit  doppelt."  In  which  case  he  drank  back  a 
whole  glass  to  you  and  you  then  drank  back  a  whole  glass  to  him. 
Any  infringement  of  these  rules,  or  any  levity  in  the 
manner  the  ritual  was  performed,  was  punished  by  your  being 
told  to  "  Einsteigen  "x  (or  by  the  words,  "  In  die  Kanne  "), 
which  meant  you  had  to  go  on  drinking  till  the  offended  party 
said  "  Geschenkt."     If  you  disobeyed  this  rule  or  did  anything 

1  Or  '*  Spinnen." 


GERMANY  123 

else  equally    grave,   you    were  declared    by  whoever    was   in 
authority  to  be  in  B.V.,  which  meant  in  a  state  of  Beer  ostracism. 
Nobody  might  then  drink  to  you  or  talk  to  you.     To  emerge 
from  this  state  of  exile,  you  had  to  stand  up,  and  someone 
else  stood  up  and  declared  that   "  Der  in  einfacher  B.V.  sick 
befindender "     ("The    in-simple-beer-banishment-finding-himsi  If 
so-and-so  ")   will  now  drink  himself   back   into  Bicrclirlichkcit 
(beer-honourability)  once  again.     He  does  it.     At  the  words, 
"  Er  thut  es,"  you  set  a  glass  to  your  lips  and  drank  it  all. 
The  other  man  then  said:  "So-and-so  ist  wieder  bierehrlich" 
("  So-and-so  is  once  more  beer  honourable  ").     Any  dispute  on  a 
point  of  ritual  was  settled  by  what  was  called  a  Bicrjunge.     An 
umpire  was  appointed,  and  three  glasses  of  beer  were  brought. 
The  umpire  saw  that  the  quantity  in  each  of  the  glasses  was 
exactly  equal,  pouring  a  little  beer  perhaps  from  one  or  the 
other  into  his  own  glass.     A  word  was  then  chosen,  for  choice  a 
long  and  difficult  word.    The  umpire  then  said  :  "  Stosst  an,"  and 
on  these  words  the  rivals  clinked  glasses;  he  then  said  :  "Sctzt  an," 
and  they  set  the  glasses  to  their  lips.     He  then  said  :  "Loss," 
and  the  rivals  drained  the  glasses  as  fast  as  they  could,  and  the 
man  who  finished  first  said:    "  Bierjunge,"  or  whatever  word 
had  been  chosen.     The  umpire  then  declared  the  winner.     All 
these  proceedings,  as  can  be  imagined,  would  be  a  little  difficult 
to  understand  if  one  didn't  know  that  they  involved  drinking 
beer.     Such  had  been  my  plight  when  the  ritual  was  explained 
to  me  by  Mr.   Braun.     I  found  the  first   evening  extremely 
bewildering,  but  I  soon  became  an  expert  in  the  ritual,  and 
took  much  pleasure  in  raising  difficult  points. 

These  gatherings  used  to  happen  every  evening.  If  you 
wished  to  celebrate  a  special  occasion  you  ordered  what 
called  a  Tunnemann,  which  was  a  huge  glass  as  big  as  a  small 
barrel  which  was  circulated  round  the  table,  everyone  drinking 
in  turn  as  out  of  a  loving-cup.  A  record  was  kept  of  tl 
ceremonies  in  a  book.  The  boys  who  attended  these  gathei  ings 
were  mostly  eighteen  or  nineteen  years  old,  and  belonged  to  the 
first  two  classes  of  the  school,  the  Prima  and  the  Secunda. 
They  belonged  to  a  Turnvcrcin,  a  gymnastic  association,  and 
were  divided  into  two  classes  the  juniors  who  were  called 
Fuchse  and  the  seniors  who  were  not.  The  FUchse  had  to 
obey  the  others. 

Another  thing  which  I  found  more  difficult  than  the  £    I 


124  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

kommcnt  was  a  card  game  which  Dr.  Timme  tried  to  teach  me. 
It  was  the  game  of  Skat,  and  was  played  by  three  people,  one 
against  two,  with  a  possible  fourth  person  cutting  in,  but  only 
by  three  at  a  time.    When  Dr.  Timme  first  explained  it  to  me  I 
understood  German  imperfectly,  and  I  could  not  make  head 
or  tail  of  the  game.     This  disgusted  Dr.  Timme,  who  said  : 
'  Herr  Baring  hat  kein  Inter  esse  daftir."     But  at  the  end  of 
five  years,  after  repeated  visits  to  Germany,  and  with  the  help 
of  an  English  book  on  the  subject,  I  ended  by  mastering  the 
principles  of  the  game.     I  think  it  is  the  best  game  of  cards 
ever  invented,  and  by  far  the  most  difficult.     I  will  not  attempt 
to  explain  it,  but  it  is  a  mixture  of  "  Solo-whist,"   "  Prefer- 
ence," and  "  Misery,"  with  a  dash  of  "  Picquet  "  in  it.     Every- 
body plays  for  his  own  hand  and  you  have  no  partner ;  so  you 
are  responsible  to  yourself  alone.     I  did  not  learn  the  game 
until  several  years  later. 

In  the  meantime,  Hubert  Cornish  had  left  Dresden  and  was 
established  at  Professor  Ihne's  at  the  Villa  Felseck,  Heidelberg. 
Professor  Ihne,  who  knew  my  cousins,  invited  me  to  go  there.  I 
set  out,  and  after  travelling  all  day  I  arrived  at  one  in  the  morn- 
ing and  found  not  only  Hubert  but  an  American  called  Mr.  Haz- 
litt  Alva  Cuppy,  who  was  studying  German,  and  who  had  come 
to  the  station  in  case  I  should  want  help  with  my  luggage.  The 
next  morning  I  woke  up  and  went  to  the  window,  and  beheld  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  sights  it  is  possible  to  see  :  Heidelberg 
Castle  and  the  hills  of  the  Neckar  in  spring.  It  was  the  beginning 
of  May.  It  was  fine  and  hot  ;  the  trees  had  just  put  on  their 
most  brilliant  green  ;  the  lilac  and  laburnum  were  out.  The 
fields,  yellow  with  buttercups  and  scarlet  with  poppies,  were 
like  impressionist  pictures  of  the  newest  school.  After  the  slow 
spring  and  the  bleak  fir-tree-clad  country  of  the  north  it  was 
like  coming  suddenly  into  another  world.  At  breakfast  I  was 
introduced  to  Professor  Ihne,  a  large,  comfortable  Professor 
with  white  hair  and  spectacles.  I  had  met  him  once  before  at 
the  Norman  Tower.  The  two  other  inmates  of  the  house  besides 
Hubert  were  Mr.  Hazlitt  Alva  Cuppy  and  Mr.  Otto  Kuhn,  an 
Austrian  ;  both  of  them  were  attending  the  lectures  of  the 
University.  The  Villa  Felseck  was  half-way  up  a  hill  covered 
with  vines,  and  Professor  Ihne  made  his  own  wine.  In  the 
garden  there  was  a  pergola  under  which  we  worked  outdoors 
at  a  table.     Then  a  most  blissful  epoch  began.     In  the  morning 


GERMANY  125 

we  went  to  lectures  in  the  University  and  strolled  about  the 
town,  and  in  the  afternoons  we  went  for  walks  in  the  woods  or 

for  expeditions  on  the  river. 

Heidelberg  was  full  of  students,  and  our  ambition  was  to  get 
to  know  some  of  them,  but  we  did  not  know  how  to  set  about 
doing  this.  We  were  too  shy  to  take  any  steps,  and  every  day 
we  settled  we  would  take  a  step,  but  the  day  passed,  and  nothing 
had  been  done.  We  confided  our  hesitations  to  a  lady — a  kind, 
motherly  lady  who  kept  a  Wirtshaus,  and  she  said  that  the 
matter  was  simple.  What  she  did  I  do  not  know,  but  that 
very  day  we  received  a  visit  from  the  representatives  of  a 
Burschenschaft  called  the  Franconia,  who  asked  us  to  visit  their 
clubhouse  with  a  view  to  our  being  received  as  guests.  We 
went  there  the  next  morning,  and  the  conditions  under  which 
we  could  be  either  Konkneipante  or  Kneipgdsie  of  the  Germania 
were  read  out  to  us. 

A  Konkneipant  was  a  kind  of  unofficial  member,  a  Kneipgas 
was  >imply  a  guest  with  certain  obligations.  The  former, 
the  Konkneipant,  seemed  to  be  liable  to  many  alarming 
possibilities  and  conditions,  and  he  had  to  be  prepared  to 
fight  duels,  even  if  he  did  not  do  so,  so  we  chose  the  latter 
status,  and  were  enrolled  as  Kneipgdste. 

We  attended  a  Kneipe  that  night,  I  think.  All  the  rules 
of  the  Bicrkomment,  which  I  have  already  described,  obtained. 
You  sat  at  a  table,  and  endless  mugs  of  beer  were  brought 
in,  and  toasts  were  drunk,  according  to  ritual,  but  the 
evening  was  enlivened  by  the  singing  of  songs  in  chorus.  Some- 
one accompanied  the  songs,  everyone  had  a  song-book,  and  the 
entertainment  led  off  with  Goethe's  song,  "Ergo  Bibamus"; 
after  that  a  song  was  sung  about  every  quarter  of  an  hour  : 
"Der  Mai  ist  gekommen,"  "  Es  hatten  drei  Gesellen  ein  fein 
Collegium,"  or  "  Es  zogen  drei  Burschen  wohl  iiber  den 
Rhein." 

The  entertainment  went  on  till  about  one  in  the  morning. 
There  was  an  official  Kneipe  three  nights  a  week  (offiziell),  and 
an  unofficial  Kneipe  (offizieuse)  on  the  other  nights.  Besides 
this,  the  members  of  the  Burschenschaft  met  in  the  morning  foi 
Bruhsclioppen  in  the  castle  gardens,  or  elsewhere,  and  in  thw 
afternoon  went  expeditions  together.  In  the  morning  they  had 
fencing  lessons.  They  never  went  to  lectures.  When  they 
wanted  to  work  they  went  for  a  term  to  another  university, 


126  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  did  nothing  but  work  there.  One  morning  Hubert  and  I 
attended  a  lecture  on  Philosophic,  that  is  to  say,  history,  and 
curiously  enough  the  lecture  was  about  England.  The  lecturer 
went  through  the  gifts  which  different  nations  had  bequeathed 
to  the  world  as  a  legacy  ;  how  Greece  had  given  the  arts  to  the 
world,  and  the  Romans  had  given  it  law  ;  England's  gift  to  the 
world,  he  said,  was  Freedom,  and  as  he  said  the  word  Freiheit, 
his  voice  rang,  and  we  felt  all  of  a  tremble. 

The  country  round  Heidelberg  was  at  this  time  of  year  at  its 
most  glorious.  The  fields  were  sheets  of  the  brightest  yellow. 
At  night  choruses  of  nightingales  sang  ;  the  air  was  heavy  with 
the  smell  of  the  lilacs.  Sometimes  we  would  go  up  the  river 
and  to  the  little  town  of  Neckarsteinar,  which  is  like  a  toy  city 
on  the  top  of  a  green  hill,  with  a  wall  round  it,  and  is  exactly 
what  I  imagined  the  "  green  hill  far  away  "  to  be  when  I  was  a 
child,  except  that  it  had  a  wall.  One  evening — but  this  was 
later  in  the  summer  when  I  went  back  a  second  time  to 
Heidelberg — we  had  a  Kneipe  in  Dr.  Ihne's  garden  and  invited 
the  Germania  Burschenschaft.  Professor  Ihne  came  and  made  a 
speech  and  then  left  us  ;  songs  were  sung,  and  I  made  a  speech 
in  German,  and  we  sang  :  "  Alt  Heidelberg  du  Feine." 

Besides  all  these  events,  Hubert  and  I  spent  a  good  deal  of 
time  reading  and  discussing  theories  of  life.  We  were  intoxicated 
by  Swinburne,  spellbound  by  Kipling,  and  great  devotees  of 
Meredith  and  Hardy.  We  also  read  a  certain  amount  of  German, 
and  I  remember  reading  Lewes'  Life  of  Goethe.  I  had  already 
read  a  certain  amount  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  with  Dr.  Timme, 
including  Hermann  und  Dorothea,  Iphegenie  auf  Tauris,  and 
Tasso.  Faust  and  the  lyrics  I  had  read  by  myself  as  soon  as  I 
could  spell  out  the  letters.  Professor  Ihne  used  to  discuss  books 
with  us.  He  admired  Byron  enormously.  He  had  no  patience 
with  the  German  infatuation  for  Tennyson,  especially  for 
'  Enoch  Arden,"  which  he  thought  a  childish  poem.  Byron, 
he  used  to  say,  was  a  giant  ;  Tennyson  a  dwarf.  Shelley,  he 
admitted,  had  written  a  fine  philosophical  poem  :  "  Prometheus 
Unbound,"  and  Swinburne  could  schone  Versen  machen.  He 
could  not  abide  the  German  cult  for  Shakespeare.  It  was  not 
that  he  did  not  admire  Shakespeare  as  a  dramatist  and  a  poet, 
but  the  German  searching  for  meanings  in  the  plays,  and  the 
philosophical  theories  deduced  from  them  and  spun  round  his 
work,  made  him  impatient.     This  was  a  sound  point  of  view,  for 


GERMANY  127 

he  approached  Shakespeare  in  much  the  same  spirit  as  Dryden 
and  Dr.  Johnson  did.  Hamlet  annoyed  him.  Why,  he  used 
to  ask,  did  Hamlet  presume  to  think  he  was  born  to  set  the 
world  aright  ?  Nobody  had  asked  him  to  do  so.  Othello,  he 
said,  was  stupid  :  ein  dummcr  Kerl.  The  tragedies  hurt  him 
too  much.     He  preferred  Schiller. 

He  had  no  great  love  for  Milton's  Paradise  Lost  either ; 
he  thought  there  was  a  lot  of  tautology  in  the  English  language. 
He  said  the  phrase,  "  Assemble  and  meet  together,"  in  the 
Prayer  Book  was  an  instance  of  this.  He  said  the  mod 
English  writers  used  unnecessarily  long  Latin  words.  He  had 
actually  seen  the  word  to  pullulate  in  a  Times  leading  article. 
Swarm  would  have  meant  the  same  thing  and  been  a  thousand 
times  better.  He  was  broad-minded  in  p  >litics  and  the  contrary 
of  a  Chauvinist.  He  had  a  hearty  dislike  of  Bismarck.  There 
was  something  refreshingly  Johnsonian  about  him,  and  when 
Mr.  Cuppy  read  him  the  thesis  which  he  destined  to  show  up 
to  the  Heidelberg  examiners  for  his  degree,  Professor  Ihne 
repeated  the  first  sentence,  which  ran  thus  :  "  Ever  since  my 
earliest  years  I  determined  to  be  a  great  man,"  and  said  : 
"  Pooh,  pooh,  you  can't  say  that  here."  "  But  it's  true,"  said 
Mr.  Cuppy. 

Mr.  Cuppy  was  a  charming  character.  He  had  been  in  about 
twenty-five  professions  before  arriving  at  Heidelberg,  and  he 
had  been  in  a  circus  troop,  a  stoker  in  the  railway,  a  clerk,  a 
journalist,  a  farmer,  and  I  don't  know  how  many  other  things, 
and  he  was  now  working  hard  for  his  degree.  He  was  the 
kindest  man  I  have  ever  met,  and  there  was  no  trouble  he  would 
not  take  to  do  one  a  service,  and  there  was  no  atom  of  selfishness 
in  his  composition. 

The  students  took  us  to  the  Mensur  to  see  the  duels.  The 
students  fought  with  sharp  rapiers,  as  sharp  as  a  razor  on 
one  side,  which  they  held  high  over  their  heads,  all  the  fighting 
being  done  by  the  strength  of  the  wrist  ;  you  could  only,  from 
the  position  that  the  rapier  was  held  in,  wound  your  adversary 
on  the  top  of  his  head  or  on  the  side  of  his  cheek,  but  lest  your 
rapier  should  go  astray,  and  wound  some  other  vital  part  the 
duellists  wore  a  padded  jacket,  and  a  protection  for  the  neck. 
The  wounds  on  the  top  of  the  head  were  formidable,  and 
directly  after  a  fight  they  were  sewn  up.  The  Mensur  reeked 
with  iodoform.    After  the  entertainment  wasover  Maibomlevras 


128  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

drunk,  a  delicious  sort  of  cup  in  which  wild  strawberries  floated. 
Hubert  used  to  have  fencing  lessons  and  found  the  exercise 
difficult. 

The  time   came  when  I  had  to  go   back  to   Hildesheim. 
Shortly  after  I  arrived  there  the  Timmes  invited  Hubert  Cornish 
to  come  and  stay  with  them,  and  he  stayed  with  us  for  about  ten 
days.     During  his  visit  we  went  for  a  short  walking  tour  in  the 
Harz  Mountains  and  climbed  up  the  Brocken,  a  disappointing 
mountain,   as,  so  far  from   meeting  Mephistopheles  and  the 
witches,  you  walk  up  a  broad  and  intensely  civilised  and  tidy 
road,  with  a  plentiful  array  of  notice-boards,  till  you  get  to  the 
top,  where  it  is  uncomfortably  cold.     After  he  left  us,  it  was 
settled,  at  my  earnest  request,  that  I  should  go  to  the  school,  the 
Real  Gymnasium,  and  take  part  in  some  of  the  lessons.     I  was 
to  be  an  Oberprimaner :  in  the  first  class,  that  is  to  say ;  and  to 
attend  not  all  the  lessons,  but  the  English,  German,  and  History 
classes.     Before  entering  upon  this  school  career,  Frau  Doktor 
Timme  told  me  that  I  must  make  an  official  visit  to  all  the 
masters  with  gloves.     So  I  bought  a  pair  of  shiny  glace  gloves 
and  paid  an  official  visit  to  the  Headmaster  and  the  various 
undermasters.     The  first  class  I  attended  was  a  mathematical 
lesson,  given  by  the  Headmaster.     I  sat  next  to  a  boy  called 
Schwerin,  whom  I  met  years  later  as  the  director  of  one  of  the 
Berlin  theatres.     I  was  not  meant  to  go  to  this  lesson,  and  I 
went  there  by  accident,  but  the  Headmaster  told  me  I  might 
stay  and  listen  to  it  if  I  liked.     It  was  so  far  above  my  head 
that  I  did  not  even  know  what  it  was  about.     At  the  English 
lesson  I  was  more  at  home,  and  I  was  asked  to  give  the  English 
dictation.     I  did  this,  but  the  boys  at  once  complained,  as  I  did 
not  read  out  the  English  with  the  German  pronunciation,  which 
they  were  accustomed  to,  and  they  could  not  understand  me. 
The  master  said  they  were  quite  right,  and  that  it  was  plain  I 
did  not  know  how  to  pronounce  English.     The  lessons  in  German 
literature  and  in  history  were  interesting.     Every  week  the 
boys  had  to  write  a  German  essay  on  the  topic  that  was  being 
discussed,  or   rather  on  the  book  that  was  being  read  and 
diagnosed.     This  essay  was  the  main  feature  of  the  week's  work, 
just  as  Latin  verses  were  at  Eton.     The  writing  of  this  essay 
took  an  enormous  amount  of  time  and  trouble.     I  only  wrote 
one,  on  Schiller's  Braut  von  Messina.     It  had  to  be  neatly 
copied  out,  on  paper  folded  in  a  special  way,  and  the  subject 


GERMANY  120, 

had  to  be  divided  into  sections.  The  history  master  was  fond 
of  drawing  parallels  between  ancient  and  modern  history,  and 
when  he  discussed  the  Punic  wars,  he  laid  stress  on  the  fact 

that  sea    power  had  been   beaten  by  land   power.     That  v. 
he  said,  the  universal  lesson  of  history,  and  Lei    England  lay 
this  matter  to  heart.     The  Napoleonic  Wars  seemed  to  have 
escaped  him. 

After  I  had  been  at  Hildesheim  a  little  time,  Fran  Timme 
told  me  one  day  that  perhaps  I  was  unaware  how  greatly 
Englishmen  were  disliked  in  Germany.  This  was  a  complete 
surprise  to  me,  as  I  had  always  thought  the  relations  between 
the  two  countries  were  supposed  to  be  good,  and  that  in  a  kind  of 
way  the  Germans  were  supposed  to  be  our  cousins.  "  No/'  said 
Frau  Timme  ;  "  there  is  a  real  prejudice  against  English  people," 
and  Timme  added  :  "There  had  always  been  cin  gewisser  Neid," 
a  certain  envy  of  the  English.  They  knew,  they  said,  that 
individual  Englishmen  were  often  admirable,  but  politically 
and  collectively  the  English  were  disliked.  One  grievance 
was  we  supplied,  they  said,  the  French  with  coal  during 
the  Franco-Prussian  War:  another,  the  behaviour  of  the 
Empress  Frederick,  who  was  a<  1  used  of  redecorating 
Frederick  the  Great's  rooms  at  Potsdam.  I  found  after- 
wards the  Empress  Frederick's  doings  were  a  universal 
topic,  wherever  I  went  in  Germany.  Frau  Timme's  brother, 
Onkel  Adolph,  deplored  the  relations  between  Great  Britain 
and  Germany,  which  he  said  could  not  well  be  worse, 
although  looking  back  on  that  time  they  were  supposed  then, 
I  think,  to  be  good.  The  Timmes  were  Hanoverians,  and 
used  still  to  reckon  in  Thalers  and  speak  of  the  Prussians  with 
dislike  ;  in  spite  of  this  they  were  whole-hearted  admirers  of 
Bismarck.  I  enjoyed  my  little  bit  of  school  life  at  Hildesheim 
immensely.  I  used  to  get  up  at  half-past  six,  walk  to  school 
and  be  there  by  seven,  wear  a  red  cap,  take  part  in  the  few 
classes  I  attended,  and  then  come  back  for  luncheon.  In  the 
afternoon,  I  used  to  go  for  walks  or  bathe  in  the  little  river 
which  ran  through  Hildesheim,  called  the  Innerste.  In  tin- 
evenings  before  supper  we  met  at  Hasse's,  and  sometimes  we 
used  to  walk  to  a  distant  village  and  hold  a  A';/<//v.  after 
which  the  boys  used  to  dance  to  the  strains  of  DonaUWeiUti. 
It  was  difficult  to  believe  that  one  had  ever  lived  any  other 
kind  of  life. 
9 


130  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Domestic  life  in  the  Timme  family  was  full  of  infinite  charm 
and  many  amusing  little  incidents.  Dr.  Timme  grew  a  melon, 
which  he  kept  in  a  cucumber  frame.  It  was  not  a  satis- 
factory melon,  for  it  never  grew  to  be  larger  than  a  tennis  ball. 
It  was  hard  and  green.  Nevertheless,  one  day  Dr.  Timme  made 
the  announcement  that  the  melon  would  be  ready  for  eating 
in  a  fortnight's  time.  "  In  vierzehn  Tagen  wird  die  Melons 
gegessen,"  were  his  actual  words.  Frau  Doktor  looked  sceptical. 
When  the  fortnight  had  elapsed  Timme  brought  in  the  melon, 
which  was  still  no  bigger  and  no  softer,  and  said,  "  Heute  essen 
wir  die  Melone"  ("To-day  the  melon  will  be  eaten"),  and  he 
cut  it  with  difficulty  into  twelve  bits.  Frau  Doktor  said  it  was 
unripe,  and  not  fit  to  be  eaten,  and  that  it  was  quite  hard  and 
green.  "  No,"  said  Timme,  "  Dass  ist  die  Sorte,  sie  bleibt  immer 
griln  "  ("It  is  that  kind  of  melon  :  an  evergreen  ").  He  added 
later,  "  Man  sollle  immer  unreifes  Obst  essen.  Die  Thiere  suchen 
sich  immer  unreifes  Obst  aus  "  ("  One  ought  always  to  eat  unripe 
fruit.     Animals  eat  unripe  fruit  for  choice  "). 

I  used  often  to  visit  the  two  aunts,  Dr.  Timme's  sisters. 
They  had  a  charming  little  house  and  a  conservatory.  Little 
Aenchen  said  one  day  that  many  people  in  the  summer  went 
to  Switzerland  or  to  Italy,  but  die  Tante  did  no  such  thing — 
she  merely  moved  into  the  conservatory.  (Sie  zieht  nur  in  die 
Blumenstube.)  One  of  the  aunts  had  a  passion  for  the  opera, 
and  knew  the  plot  of  every  opera  ever  written,  and  kept  the 
programmes,  and  was  a  mine  of  information  on  the  subject.  I 
once  said  something  rather  disparaging  about  Switzerland  to 
her,  and  she  could  not  get  over  this,  and  for  ever  afterwards  she 
would  say  that  whenever  she  looked  at  her  album  of  Swiss 
photographs  she  used  to  say :  "  Gott!  nein!  dass  Herr  Baring  das 
nicht  mag  !  "  ("  To  think  of  Mr.  Baring  not  liking  that  !  ") 

Sometimes  she  would  invite  us  to  tea,  and  we  would  have  an 
Apfeltorte  in  the  garden,  and  if  it  was  fine  the  "  Alte  Tante  " 
used  to  come  down.  Kurt's  future  used  to  be  discussed,  and  the 
army  was  mentioned  as  a  possible  career.  "No,"  cried  the 
Alte  Tante;  "an  officer's  life  is  a  brilliant  misery"  ("  Ein 
gldnzendes  Elend").  I  said  that  in  other  professions  you  had 
the  Elend  without  the  Glanz,  the  misery  without  the  brilliance, 
and  she  was  delighted  with  this  mot. 

My  father,  who  finished  his  education  in  Germany,  at 
Gotha  (after  having  gone  to  school  at  Bath  at  the  age  of  six  in  a 


GERMANY  131 

stage-coach) ,  used  always  to  say  that  there  was  nothing  in  the 
world  for  simplicity  and  charm  to  compare  with  the  life  in  a 
small  unpretentious  household  in  the  Germany  of  old  days. 
He  used  to  tell  a  story  of  some  Coburg  royal  lady  whom  he  met 
at  Gotha  saying  to  him  after  Queen  Victoria's  marriage  to 
Prince  Albert,  "  Wenn  Sie  nach  England  kommen,  suchen  Sie 
tncinen  Vetter  Albrecht  aus  and  grilssen  Sic  ihn  von  mir  "  ("  Winn 
you  go  back  to  England,  look  up  my  Cousin  Albert  and  give 
him  my  love  "). 

The  simplicity  and  the  charm  he  described  were  to  be  found 
in  the  Timme  household  at  Hildesheim.     In  the  cosy  winter 
evenings,  in  the  little  drawing-room  with  its  warm  stove,  when 
the  lamp  used  to  be  put  on  the  table  opposite  the  place  of  honour, 
the  sofa,  against  the  wall  at  the  end  of  the  room,  a  bottle 
of  beer  and  glasses  would  be  brought,  and  Dr.  Timme  would 
light  his  cigar  and  suggest  a  game  of  Skat,  and  Onkel  Adolph 
would  stroll  behind  my  chair  and  say  :  "  Ncin,  Hcrr  Baring,  das 
diirfen  Sie  nicht  spiclen."     Then  perhaps  Fran  Timme's  mother 
would  look  in  and  occupy  the  place  of  honour,  and  perhaps 
Tante  Agnes  (who  was   an   unappreciated   poetess)   or  Tante 
Emile  (the  opera  lover),   and  perhaps  a  neighbour,   Fraulein 
Schultzen,  who  received  English  girls  in  her  house,  or  Frau 
Ober-Forster.     Then   Frau  Doktor's  mother  would  take  out 
her  knitting  and  the  children  would  be  discussed.     "  Ndchstcn 
Monat,"  someone  would  say:   "  Bekomme  Ich  ncuc  Madchen." 
Onkel  Adolph  and  Dr.  Timme  would  talk  mild  politics,  and 
faintly  deprecate  the  present  state  of  things  ;    perhaps  Herr 
Wunibald  Nick  would  be  there  and  sing  a  song — "  Es  licgt  eine 
Krone  im  lie/en  Rhein  " — and  deplore  the  amount  of  operas 
by  well-known  composers  which  were  never  performed.     "  Wird 
nicht  gegeben,"  he  would  exclaim,  after  every  item  of  his  long 
list,  or  would  almost  weep  from  enthusiasm  for  the  second 
act  of  Tristan,  although  no  Wagnerite  he.     While  this  talk  went 
on  in  the  major  key,  in  a  subdued  minor  the  aunts  and  Frau 
Doktor  and  Frau  Ober  Forster  would  tell  the  latest  develop- 
ments of  a  neighbour's  illness,  and  the  climax  of  the  tale  would 
be  reached  by  someone  saying  :   "  Dann  licss  sic  den  Arzt  rufen  " 
("Then  she  sent  for  the  doctor").     There  would  be  a  pause, 
and  someone    else   would  inevitably  ask,    "Wclchcn    Arzt?' 
("  Which  doctor  ?  "),  as  t  here  were  many  doctors  in  Hildesheim, 
and  opinions  were  sharply  divided  on  their  merits.     The  answer 


132  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

would  perhaps  be  :  "  Brandes,"  and  then  there  would  be  a  sigh 
of  relief  from  some,  a  resigned  shrug  from  others,  as  if  to  say : 
"  Poor  things,  they  knew  no  better." 

And  the  conversation  would  be  verniinftig,  and  the  old 
people  would  say  that  the  big  towns  were  spoiling  everything, 
that  life  was  a  hustle  and  a  rush,  that  Fraulein  So-and-so  was 
ein  unverschdmtes  Wesen,  and  would  bewail,  as  in  Heine's  lovely 
poem,  that  everything  had  been  better  in  their  time  : 

"  Wie  Lieb'  und  Treu'  und  Glauben 
Verschwunden  aus  der  Welt, 
Und  wie  so  teuer  der  Kaffee, 
Und  wie  so  rar  das  Geld  !  " 

And  over  all  this  scene,  and  through  this  talk,  there  would  hang 
an  indefinable  wrapping  of  cosiness  and  warmth  and  Gemiith- 
lichkeit,  and  one  had  the  same  sense  of  utter  simplicity  and 
intimate  comfort  that  a  fairy-tale  of  Grimm  gives  one.  I 
wonder  whether  the  charm  and  the  simplicity  have  disappeared 
from  Germany,  and  whether,  in  spite  of  Imperialism,  the  war, 
frightfulness,  or  anything  else,  the  same  thing  goes  on  in  the 
same  way,  in  hundreds  of  houses  and  families  ! 

In  any  case,  whether  it  exists  now  or  not,  it  existed  then  ; 
and  I  was  privileged  to  experience  it,  to  enjoy  it  to  the  full,  and 
to  look  back  on  it  now,  after  so  many  years  and  when  so  much 
that  is  irreparable  has  come  between  it  and  me,  with  undying 
affection  and  gratitude,  and  with  an  infinitely  sad  regret. 

Once  during  the  war,  I  had  luncheon  with  one  of  the  R.F.C. 
Squadron  Messes,  where  I  met  a  pilot  who  had  learnt  German 
at  the  Timmes'.  We  talked  of  them,  of  Atho  and  of  Kurt, 
whom  he  had  known  grown-up,  and  at  the  end  of  luncheon 
that  pilot,  who  was  just  off  to  fight  the  Germans  in  the  air,  and 
who  was  so  soon  to  meet  with  death  in  the  air  fighting  the 
Germans,  said  to  me  :   "  Prosit  Timmes." 

In  the  summer,  we  would  have  tea  in  a  little  arbour  in  the 
garden,  and  in  the  mornings,  both  in  winter  and  in  the  summer, 
towards  eleven  o'clock,  when  I  was  hungry,  I  would  go  and  tell 
Frau  Doktor,  and  she  would  take  me  to  the  kitchen  and  fry  me 
herself  some  Spiegeleier  and  Speck.  Towards  the  beginning 
of  my  first  summer  at  Hildeshcim  a  new  lodger  arrived  in  the 
shape  of  a  German  boy  called  Hans  Wippern,  the  son  of  a 
neighbouring  landowner,  who  had  a  large  farm  just  out- 
side Hildesheim.     Hans  was  at  the  school  and  was  always 


GERMANY  133 

hungry.  One  day  he  had  a  slight  l>ili< >u-,  attack  and  didn't 
come  down  to  Mitla^essen.  although  he  was  much  better. 
I  1  in  Doktor  said  she  thought  Hans  might  fancy  a  pigeon. 
"  Nein,"  said  Timme,  "  l.r  soil  hungen  "  ("  He  must  fast  "). 
But  Frau  Doktor  surreptitiously  sent  up  three  pigeons  to  his 
bedroom.  The  fond  was  delicious  at  theTimmes',  and  the  great 
days  were  when  we  had  Kartoffeln-pitffer  for  Mittagcsscn,  a  sort 
of  pancake  made  of  potatoes,  or  as  a  great  treat  "  Gdnzebratenr 
I  used  to  go  to  the  market  in  the  lovely  old  Markt-platz  with 
Frau  Doktor  on  the  days  when  she  would  buy  a  goose,  and  on 
the  way  back  we  would  stop  at  Frau  lirandes'  confectionery 
and  have  a  slice  of  Apfellortc.     Frau   Brand  a  warm, 

welcoming  saleswoman,  and  her  confectionery  was  perfect. 

When  the  long  holidays  began  it  was  settled  that  I  would 
do  best  to  go  on  a  Rundrcise  and  see  what  I  could  of  Germany. 
Dr.  Timme  arranged  my  itinerary  and  I  took  a  Rundrcise  Billet. 
I  was  to  go  to  Frankfort,  Nuremberg,  Dresden,  Leipzig,  and 
perhaps  Berlin,  and  so  home  again.  I  went  back  to  Heidel- 
berg first  and  found  Hubert  Cornish  had  become  an  expert 
fencer.  We  attended  many  a  Kncipe  and  saw  a  lot  of  the 
students,  and  once  more  I  stayed  with  Professor  Ihne. 

My  recollections  of  this  second  visit  to  Heidelberg  are 
merged  with  those  of  my  first  visit,  and  I  cannot  distingui>h 
between  the  two.  Hubert  Cornish  had  to  go  home,  and  we 
settled  to  go  to  Cologne  by  steamer  down  the  Rhine.  We  went 
pa-t  I'.ingen  and  Coblenz  and  Bonn  and  the  rocks  of  the  Lorelei, 
and  we  stayed  a  night  at  Cologne.  There  Hubert  left  me  and 
went  home,  and  I  went  back  by  train  to  Frankfort.  Hubert 
ha.l  fired  me  with  the  desire  to  hear  Wagner.  He  had  heard 
many  operas  at  Dresden.  The  result  of  his  talk  was  that  I 
derided  to  go  to  Bayreuth.  We  went  one  night  to  Mannheim 
to  th.'  opera,  but  I  cannot  recollect  what  we  saw.  At  Frank- 
fort I  heard  the  Mikado, and  the  Cavalleria  Rusticana,  which  1 
had  already  heard  at  Hanover.  From  Frankfort  I  went  to 
Nuremberg,  and  fnun  Nuremberg  to  Bayreuth.  I  had  tickets 
tor  one  of  performances  of  the  Bayreuth  Festival,  but 

when  I  arrived  I  found  that  there  was  a  performance  of  the 
Mcistersin^er  that  very  day,  and  I  got  a  ticket  for  it  at  the 
station.  I  took  lodgings  in  a  little  room  in  the  town.  1  went 
off  to  the  theatre,  and  t  ht>  fust  notes  of  the  orchestra  enlarged 
one's  conception   of   what    an   orchestra   could   be.     It    was  a 


134  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

wonderful  experience  to  hear  these  operas  for  the  first  time, 
at  the  age  of  eighteen  before  hearing  any  discussions  about 
them,   before   knowing  what   they  were   about,   when   every 
note  of   the   music   and   every  scene   of   the   drama  were   a 
revelation  and  a  surprise.     I  heard  the  Meister singer,  Parsifal, 
Tristan    und   Isolda,  and    Tannhauser.      After    the    Meister- 
singer    and    Tristan,   Tannhauser   seemed    tawdry  and    thin. 
These  operas  were  all  of  them  magnificently  performed  that 
year.     Scheidemantel,  Malten,  Materna,  and  other  stars  from 
Vienna  and   Dresden  were  taking  part  in  the  Festival,  but 
even  then  I  thought  the  scenery  ugly,  especially  the  garden 
scene  in  Parsifal,  which  was  made  of  crude  vermilion  and 
yellow  tulips  ;  in  the  other  operas,  Tristan  and  the  Meister- 
singer,  the  scenery  was  sober  and  adequate,  and  the  lighting 
effects  were  wonderfully  well  managed,  but  all  that  was  lost 
sight  of  in  the  orchestra  conducted  by  Mottl.     I  do  not  suppose 
there  has  ever  been  any  finer  orchestra  playing  in  the  world 
than  that  which  I  heard  when  Tristan  was  performed  that  year. 
It  seemed  a  pity  the  curtain  ever  went  up,  for  Tristan,  although 
he  sang  well,  was  an  old  man  (Heinrich  Vogt),  and  Isolda  (Rose 
Sucher)  was  a  little  too  massive.     At  Bayreuth,  during  the  first 
series  I  attended,  there  were  some  people  I  knew,  and  during 
that  series  and  the  others  I  made  friends  with  many  other  people 
whom  I  had  never  seen  before.     One  day,  during  the  entr'acte, 
the  crowd  automatically  divided  as  two  people  passed  by — a 
lady  and  her  husband — and  a  space  was  made  round  them. 
The  lady  had  a  small,  flowerlike  head,  and  the  dividing  crowd 
near  her  looked,  as  she  passed,  more  commonplace  and  commoner 
than  it  did  already.     On  one  of  the  off-days  I  saw  the  same 
lady  again  sitting  at  a  table  in  a  restaurant  garden  and  read- 
ing aloud  out  of  a  Tauchnitz  novel.     At  my  table  there  were  a 
Frenchman  and  his  wife.  "Dieu  qu'elle  est  belle,"  said  the  French- 
man, staring.    "  Je  ne  dis  pas  qu'elle  ne  soit  pas  jolie,"  said  the 
French  lady,  rather  nettled.     My  best  friend  at  Bayreuth  was 
one  of  the  second  violins  in  the  orchestra.     He  thought  the 
operas  were  far  too  long,  especially  the  second  act  of  Tristan  and 
Isolda,  which  he  said  was  for  the  players  more  than  flesh  and 
blood  could  bear.     He  said  it  would  be  no  offence  to  Wagner 
to  cut  it,  and  after  the  performance  he  used  to  come  out  from 
the  theatre  terribly  exhausted.    We  often  had  dinner  together, 
and  he  told  me  a  great  deal  about  musical  life  in  Germany.     I 


GERMANY  135 

also  made  friends  with  an  English  musician  who  lived  at  Syd< 
ham,  and  we  spent  the  off-days  in  the  country  together.  I 
think  I  must  have  stayed  for  three  series  of  performaift  es,  and 
I  heard  each  of  these  operas  three  times.  I  went  after  this  to 
Dresden,  where  I  enjoyed  the  picture  gallery,  and  so  back  to 
Hildesheim.  In  September  I  received  a  letter  from  Professor 
Ihne  asking  me  to  go  back  there.  The  Duke  of  York  was  with 
him,  learning  German,  so  I  went  once  more  to  Heidelberg  and 
stayed  there  over  a  fortnight.  I  went  back  to  Hildesheim,  and 
I  had  not  been  there  long  when  I  got  a  telegram  telling  me 
to  come  home  at  once.  I  knew  my  mother  was  ill,  but  a 
letter  giving  me  details  just  missed  me,  as  it  went  to  Heidel- 
berg. I  found  my  brother-in-law,  Bobby  Spencer,  in  London. 
He  took  a  special  to  Bristol,  as  we  had  missed  the  ordinary 
night  train,  and  we  got  to  Membland  next  morning.  Never 
had  Membland  looked  more  beautiful.  The  days  were  cloudless 
and  breathless  ;  the  foliage  was  intact  but  turned  to  gold,  and 
bathed  in  the  quiet  October  sunshine.  I  arrived  just  in  time. 
A  specialist  came  down  from  London,  but  there  was  nothing  to 
be  done.  Cherie  came  down  from  Hampshire,  and  D.,  who  had 
married  Mr.  Crosbie,  came  back  and  stayed  in  the  house,  but  it 
was  only  for  a  few  days. 

I  went  to  London  and  stayed  a  day  or  two  in  Charles  Street 
with  my  brother  John.  I  spent  a  night  at  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  and  then  I  went  to  Hildesheim  on  my  way  to 
Berlin,  where  it  was  settled  I  was  to  go. 

I  was  only  a  day  or  two  at  Hildesheim.  Nothing  could  have 
been  kinder  than  the  Timmes  were  to  me  then,  and  Onkel 
Adolph,  when  he  heard  I  had  lost  my  coat,  said:  "  Wenn  allc 
Minschen  so  harmlos  wic  Sie  war  en,  Herr  Baring,  so  wiirde  die 
Welt  fin  r fines  Paradics  sein,  aber  I  aber  !  " 

In  Berlin  I  stayed  at  first  at  an  hotel,  and  then  I  took  two 
rooms  on  the  top  floor  of  a  house  in  the  Unter  den  Linden. 
1  knew  no  one  in  the  town  at  first,  but  a  few  days  after  I  was 
settled  in  my  rooms  I  met  my  cousin,  Arthur  Ponsonby,  who 
was  learning  German  there  too,  and  who  was  staying  at  a  pension 
in  the  Potsdamer  Strasse.  Although  I  had  seen  him  all  my 
life  I  had  not  known  him  before,  and  we  gradually  made 
each  other's  acquaintance.  As  we  were  both  fond  of  the 
theatre  we  went   to    plays  together   and   saw  a   great   many 


136  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

interesting  things.  Ibsen's  Doll's  House,  which  was  admirably 
played  at  the  Berliner  Theater,  and  Sudermann's  Die  Ehre, 
some  Shakespeare  performances,  in  which  Ludwig  Barnay 
played,  and  many  plays  translated  from  the  French.  At  the 
Residenz  Theater  there  was  an  excellent  comic  actor  called 
Alexander.  One  night  we  went  to  see  Faust,  Goethe's  Faust, 
not  Gounod's,  performed  at  the  Schauspielhaus,  and  when  the 
opening  speech,  "  Robe  nun,  ach,  philosophie,"  was  declaimed 
the  effect  was  tremendous.  The  scenes  which  followed  were 
less  effective  on  the  stage,  except  those  where  Gretchen  appears. 
One  day  we  heard  that  a  famous  Italian  actress  was  to  perform 
in  Berlin.  Her  name  was  Eleonora  Duse.  We  had  never 
heard  her  name  mentioned,  but  the  man  who  sold  theatre 
tickets  said  she  was  a  rival  of  Sarah  Bernhardt.  She  was  to 
open  in  the  Dame  aux  Camelias.  We  took  tickets,  read  the 
play  beforehand  in  German,  as  we  neither  of  us  knew  Italian, 
and  we  went  on  the  first  night.  To  see  a  play  in  a  language 
you  do  not  understand,  however  well  you  know  the  story,  takes 
away  half  the  pleasure,  but  we  never  had  a  doubt  about  the 
quality  of  her  art.  The  beauty  and  pathos  of  her  death  scene 
were  so  great  as  to  be  independent  of  words  and  speech.  Had 
she  been  acting  in  Chinese  the  effect  would  have  been  just  as 
great.  We  saw  her  afterwards  in  the  Doll's  House,  in  which 
she  was  equally  remarkable,  and  the  scathing  irony  with  which 
she  lashed  Helmer,  the  husband,  was  unforgettable. 

We  also  went  to  concerts,  and  once  or  twice  to  the  opera,  but 
the  opera  in  Berlin  was  not  a  good  one. 

I  knew  hardly  any  Germans  while  I  was  at  Berlin.  I  had  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  a  Frau  von  Arnim,  and  one  night  I  had 
dinner  at  her  house.  There  were  five  or  six  officers  present, 
all  in  uniform,  and  one  of  them  described  a  day's  hunting  in 
England,  and  said  that  the  meet  was  crowded  with  bildschonc 
Frauen.  The  Ambassador  at  Berlin  was  Sir  Edward  Mallet, 
and  he  asked  us  to  dinner  sometimes. 

It  had  been  my  intention  to  attend  the  lectures  of  the  Berlin 
University,  and  I  was  formally  enrolled  as  a  student.  I  matri- 
culated at  the  University,  but  the  formalities  before  this  was 
accomplished  were  so  long,  that  by  the  time  they  were  finished,  I 
had  little  time  left  for  a  University  career.  However,  I  received 
a  card  which  placed  me  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Berlin 
police  and  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  University  authorities, 


GERMANY  137 

but  I  only  went  to  one  lecture.  1  had  private  lessons  in  German 
throughout  my  stay. 

I  read  a  good  many  miscellaneous  book-  during  my  stay 
in  Berlin,  and  Arthur  Ponsonby  introduced  ni<-  to  many  new 
things,  and  opened  many  doors  for  me,  especially  in  French 
literature.  He  gave  me  Tolstoy  and  Loti  to  read,  and  we  both 
had  a  passion  for  Ibsen.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  plied  him  with 
Pater,  Stevenson,  and  Swinburne.  I  was  just  at  the  age  when 
one  can  digest  anything  in  the  way  of  books,  and  the  sweeter  it 
is  the  more  one  enjoys  it.  Afterwards  much  of  the  stuff  I  was 
greedily  devouring  then  was  to  seem  like  the  almond  paste  on 
the  top  of  a  wedding-cake.  But  in  those  days  nothing  was  too 
luscious  or  too  sweet.  Arthur's  taste  was  already  more  sober 
and  grown-up  ;  the  drama  appealed  to  both  of  us,  and  we  would 
spend  hours  discussing  plays  and  players,  and  deploring  the 
state  of  the  English  stage. 

At  the  end  of  December  I  went  back  to  England  and  spent 
the  last  Christmas  but  one  at  Membland  I  was  ever  to  spend 
there. 


CHAPTER    VIII 
ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON 

AFTER  Christmas  I  stayed  a  few  days  with  Cherie  at  her 
house  at  Cosham  and  with  the  Ponsonbys  at  the  Isle 
of  Wight.     Uncle  Henry  Ponsonby  said  he  had  taken 
one  book  with  him  in  the  Crimean  War,  and  he  had  read  it 
through.     This   was   Paradise  Lost.     The  conversation  arose 
from  his  quoting  the  lines  : 

"  The  mind  is  its  own  place,  and  in  itself 
Can  make  a  Heaven  of  Hell,  a  Hell  of  Heaven," 

and  I  happened  to  know  where  the  quotation  came  from.  I 
stayed  for  a  few  days  with  the  Bensons  at  Addington.  Arthur 
and  Fred  Benson  were  there,  but  none  of  the  rest  of  the  family. 
Fred  Benson  had  just  finished  his  novel,  Dodo,  and  was  cor- 
recting the  proofs  of  it.  I  read  the  proofs.  Arthur  Benson 
had  written  a  great  many  poems,  which  he  read  out  to  me. 
They  were  published  later  in  the  year.  During  the  time  I  had 
spent  at  Hildesheim  I  had  continued  to  write  verse  every  now 
and  then,  and  I  used  to  send  my  efforts  to  Arthur  Benson  for 
his  criticism.  I  had  also  written  what  must  have  been  a  childish 
play,  a  modern  drama,  but  I  had  published  nothing  except  a 
little  verse  in  a  Plymouth  newspaper.  While  I  was  staying 
at  Osborne  with  the  Ponsonbys  and  also  at  Addington  with  the 
Bensons  I  heard  a  great  deal  about  a  Miss  Ethel  Smyth.  Arthur 
Benson  had  told  me  about  her  at  Eton.  She  was  a  friend  of 
his  family,  and  he  used  often  to  hear  from  her.  She  was  a 
newer  friend  of  my  aunts  and  my  cousins,  and  they  talked  a 
great  deal  about  her.  I  heard  about  her  wonderful  singing, 
her  energy,  her  vitality,  her  talk,  how  she  had  said  that  Mrs. 
Benson  was  "  as  good  as  God  and  as  clever  as  the  Devil  "  ; 
how  I  must  hear  her  sing  "  l'Anncau  d'argent,"  and  her  own 

Mass.     It  was  arranged  that  I  was  to  make  her  acquaintance. 

138 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       139 

Her  Mass  was  to  be  given  at  the  Albert  Hall,  and  I  was  invited 
by  Mrs.  Charles  Hunter  (Mis>  Smyth's  sister)  to  hear  it  from 

her  box.  The  box  was  full  of  Miss  Smyth's  hunting  friends; 
who  gave  the  music  a  respectful  hearing,  and  when  it  was  over 
we  went  to  the  Bachelors'  Club  and  had  supper.  I  sat  next 
to  Miss  Smyth  and  we  made  friends  at  once.  The  next  night 
I  had  dinner  at  Dover  Street,  where  Mrs.  Hunter  was  staying, 
and  there  I  met  General  Smyth,  Miss  Smyth's  father,  and 
Mr.  Brewster,  an  American  by  birth,  a  Frenchman  by  educa- 
tion, an  Italian  by  residence.  His  appearance  was  ti  iking  ;  he 
had  a  fair  beard  and  the  eyes  of  a  seer  ;  a  cuntrc  jour,  someone 
said  he  looked  like  a  Rembrandt.  His  manner  was  suave,  and 
at  first  one  thought  him  inscrutable — a  person  whom  one  could 
never  know,  surrounded  as  it  were  by  a  hedge  of  roses.  When 
I  got  to  know  him  better  I  found  the  whole  secret  of 
Brewster  was  this  :  he  was  absolutely  himself  :  he  said 
quite  simply  and  calmly  what  he  thought.  Nothing  leads  to 
such  misunderstandings  as  the  truth.  Bismarck  said  the  best 
of  all  diplomatic  policies  was  to  tell  the  truth,  as  nobody  believed 
you.  But  even  when  you  are  not  prepared  to  disbelieve,  and 
suspect  no  diplomatic  wiles,  the  truth  is  sometimes  disconcerting 
when  calmly  expressed.  I  recollect  my  first  conversation  with 
Mr.  Brewster.  We  talked  of  books,  and  I  was  brimful  of 
enthusiasm  for  Swinburne  and  Rossetti.  "  No,"  said  Brewster, 
"  I  don't  care  for  Rossetti ;  it  all  seems  to  me  like  an  elaborate 
exercise.  I  prefer  Paul  Verlaine."  I  knew  he  was  not  being 
paradoxical,  but  I  thought  he  was  lacking  in  catholicity, 
narrow  in  comprehension.  Why  couldn't  one  like  both  ?  I 
thought  he  was  being  Olympian  and  damping.  When  I  got 
to  know  liim  well,  I  understood  how  completely  sincere  he 
had  been,  and  how  utterly  unpretentious  ;  how  impossible 
it  was  for  him  to  pretend  he  liked  something  he  did  not  like, 
and  how  true  it  was  that  Rossetti  seemed  to  him  as  elaborate- 
as  an  exercise. 

That  night  we  went  to  a  conceit  at  St.  James's  Hall, 
and  I  saw  again  the  familiar  green  benches  where  for  so  many 
years  my  mother  had  scats  in  Row  2.  "  You  remind  me/' 
said  a  lady  I  was  introduced  to  that  night,  "oi  a  lady  who 
used  to  come  and  sit  here  at  the  Pops  in  the  second  row,  a  long 
time  ago." 

I  can't  remember  where  it  was  I  first  heard  Ethel  Smyth  sing, 


140  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

whether  it  was  in  Dover  Street  or  in  her  own  little  house,  "  One 
Oak."  I  remember  the  songs  she  sang — some  Brahms,  some 
Schubert,  among  others  "Pause"  and  "  Der  Doppelganger," 
"  l'Anneau  d'argent,"  and  "  Come  o'er  the  Sea,"  and  I  knew  at 
once  that  I  had  opened  a  window  on  a  new  and  marvellous 
province.  The  whole  performance  was  so  complete  and  so 
poignantly  perfect  :  the  accompaniment,  the  way  the  words  and 
the  music  were  blended,  and  the  composer's  inmost  and  most 
intimate  intention  and  meaning  seemed  to  be  revealed  and 
interpreted  as  if  he  were  singing  the  song  himself  for  the  first 
time  ;  the  rare  and  exquisite  quality  and  delicacy  of  her  voice, 
the  strange  thrill  and  wail,  the  distinction  and  distinct  clear 
utterance,  where  every  word  and  every  note  told  without  effort, 
and  the  whirlwind  of  passion  and  feeling  she  evoked  in  a  song 
such  as  "  Come  o'er  the  Sea  "  or  Brahms'  "  Botschaft." 

It  was  settled  that  I  was  to  learn  Italian,  and  for  that  pur- 
pose I  went  to  Florence.  I  stayed  in  Paris  a  few  days  on  the 
way  at  the  Hotel  St.  Romain,  Rue  St.  Roch,  and  I  went  to 
several  plays  and  saw  Bartet  at  the  Theatre  francais,  in  Le 
Pere  Prodigue.  Then  I  travelled  to  Florence  in  a  crowded 
second-class  carriage.  I  had  expected  Florence  to  be  a  dismal 
place,  full  of  buildings  like  Dorchester  House,  grey  and  cold. 
It  was  cold  when  the  Tramontana  blew,  but  I  had  forgotten 
or  rather  I  had  not  imagined  the  Italian  sun.  I  arrived 
late,  at  one  in  the  morning,  and  when  I  got  up  and  saw  the  sun 
streaming  from  a  cloudless  blue  sky  on  warm,  yellow,  sun- 
baked houses  with  red  flat  roofs,  I  was  amazed.  I  stayed  the 
first  night  I  arrived  at  an  hotel,  and  then  moved  into  a  pension 
at  Lung'Arno  della  Borsa  2  bis,  which  belonged  to  Signora 
Agnese  Traverso.  I  began  to  learn  Italian  at  once,  and  had 
lessons  from  a  charming  old  Italian  called  Signor  Benelli. 
Signor  Benelli  had  been  a  soldier  in  Garibaldi's  Army  ;  he 
was  an  intense  enthusiast  both  in  politics  and  literature  —  a 
Dante  scholar  and  an  admirer  of  the  moderns  :  Carducci, 
and  Gabriele  d'Annunzio's  early  poems,  which  were  not  well 
known  then.  I  never  had  a  better  master  before  or  after- 
wards. He  knew  English  well  and  revelled  in  English  poetry, 
especially  in  Shelley  and  Keats.  As  soon  as  I  got  to  understand 
Italian  we  read  Dante,  and  I  read  the  whole  of  the  Divina 
Commedia  aloud  with  Signor  Benelli,  all  Leopardi,  and  a  great 
deal  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto.     I  also  made  other  discoveries  for 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       141 

myself  in  other  branches  of  literature.  There  was  a  large 
lending  library  at  Florence,  full  of  ;  in  every  European 

literature.  I  there  discovered  by  myself  the  works  of  Anatole 
France  and  read  Thais,  Balthazar,  and  L' f-.lui  de.  Xacre,  le 
Crime  de  Sylvestre  Bonnard,  and  La  Kotisscrie  de  la  Reine 
Pedauquc.  I  read  a  great  deal  of  Maupassant  as  well,  the 
complete  works  of  Merimde,  some  Balzac,  and  the  plays  of 
Dumas  fils,  and  all  the  Sardou  I  could  get  hold  of.  I  also  had 
a  few  Russian  lessons  from  a  lady,  but  I  did  not  go  on  with 
them  as  I  had  not  the  time.  I  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Miss  Violet  Paget  (Vernon  Lee),  who  lived  in  a  lovely  little 
villa  called  "  The  Palmerino  "  on  the  Fiesole  side  of  the  town. 

The  spring  in  Florence  is  a  wonderful  pageant.  At  first 
you  do  not  see  where  there  can  be  any  room  for  it.  The  trees 
seem  all  evergreen — cypresses  and  silvery  olives.  The  land- 
scape seems  complete  as  it  is.  Then  suddenly  the  brown  hills 
are  alive  with  wild,  fluttering,  red  jagged-edged  tulips.  Large 
bunches  of  anemones,  violets,  and  lilies  of  the  valley  are  sold 
in  the  streets,  and  soon  roses.  Then  the  young  corn  shoots  up, 
and  all  the  hills  become  green  and  the  cornfields  are  fringed 
with  wild  dog-roses,  and  soon  the  tall  red  and  white  lilies  come 
out,  and  then  the  wistaria,  and  the  Judas  trees  -a  dense  mass  of 
blossom  against  the  solid,  speckless  blue  sky. 

In  May  I  met  Hubert  Cornish  at  Naples  and  spent  a  few 
days  with  him,  and  we  went  for  a  night  to  Sorrento,  and  in 
June  I  went  to  Venice  by  myself  and  stayed  there  for  one  long 
and  deliciously  hot  week.  I  saw  the  pictures,  drifted  about 
on  the  lagoon,  and  bathed  at  the  Lido  in  the  Adriatic,  the  only 
sea  that  is  really  hot  enough. 

At  the  end  of  June  I  was  back  again  in  England.  I  was  to 
go  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge,  but  to  do  either  of  these  things 
it  is  necessary  to  pass  an  examination  in  which  sums  had  to  be 
done.  At  first  I  was  going  to  Oxford,  but  it  was  thought  that 
I  would  never  be  able  to  pass  Smalls,  so  it  was  derided  I  should 
go  to  Cambridge,  but  in  order  to  pass  the  examination  before 
matriculating  I  had  to  go  to  a  crammer's  to  brush  up  my  Latin 
and  Greek  and  try  to  learn  Arithmetic. 

At  the  end  of  July  I  went  to  Eton  and  stayed  with  the 
Cornishes.  Mr.  Cornish  had  just  been  made  Vice-Provost,  and 
was  moving  into  the  Cloisters  from  Holland  House.  It  was  a 
hot,  beautiful  August  and  we  spent  most  of  our  days  on  the 


142  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

river.  One  day  there  was  a  regatta  going  on  at  Datchet.  As 
we  passed  it  we  made  triolets  on  the  events  of  the  regatta. 
"  My  shirt  is  undone,  here  comes  the  regatta,"  one  of  them 
began.  The  incident  that  struck  us  most  was  the  passage  of 
Miss  Tarver  in  a  boat.  She  appeared  to  be  in  distress,  and  was 
weeping.     This  incident  was  at  once  put  to  verse  in  this  triolet  : 

"  Oh  !    there's  Lily  Tarver 

In  oceans  of  tears, 
Like  streams  of  hot  lava, 
Oh  !    there's  Lily  Tarver  I 
The  regatta's  loud  brava 

Still  rings  in  her  ears. 
Oh  I    there's  Lily  Tarver 

In  oceans  of  tears  !  " 

At  Arthur  Benson's  one  night  I  met  Mr.  Gosse,  who 
was  kind  to  me,  and  from  that  moment  became  a  lifelong 
friend. 

I  had  written  an  essay  on  Collins,  and  Arthur  Benson  had 
sent  it  for  me  to  Macmillan's  Magazine.  The  editor  did  not 
print  it,  but  he  wrote  me  a  letter  about  it,  urging  me  to 
go  on  writing.  While  I  had  been  at  Florence  I  had  written 
a  complete  novel,  which  I  had  sent  to  the  publishers.  The 
publishers'  reader  reported  that  it  was  worth  printing,  and 
offered  to  publish  it  on  the  half-profits  system.  I  had  the  sense 
to  put  it  in  the  fire.  Everyone,  said  Vernon  Lee  to  me  once, 
should  write  a  novel  once,  if  only  so  as  never  to  want  to  do 
it  again. 

In  August  I  went  to  Mr.  Tatham,  who  lived  near  Abingdon, 
to  prepare  for  my  examination.  At  his  house  several  boys  were 
struggling  with  the  same  task  and  preparing  to  go  to  Oxford. 
Mr.  Tatham  did  not  teach  me  arithmetic — nobody  could  do 
that  —  but  he  taught  me  some  Greek  and  Latin.  We  read 
the  Plutus  of  Aristophanes,  and  some  Catullus,  and  he  led 
me  into  new  fields  in  English  literature.  I  enjoyed  myself 
at  his  house  quite  immensely.  Sometimes  at  dinner  Mr. 
Tatham  would  laugh  till  tears  poured  down  his  cheeks,  and 
once  he  laughed  so  much  that  he  was  almost  ill  and  had  to  go 
upstairs  to  his  room  to  recover. 

We  used  to  make  up  triolets  at  meals,  and  at  all  times  of 
the  day,  and  while  I  was  at  Abingdon  I  had  two  little  books  of 
them  printed  called  Norlhcourl  Nonsense. 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       143 

One  of  them  was  written  while  dressing  for  dinner  and  after 
having  been  stung  by  a  fly,  and  addressed  to  Mr.  Tatham  and 
sent  to  him  by  the  maid.     It  ran  thus  : 

"  .May   I   wear  a  silk  tie 

To-night  at  the  tabk 
I've  been  stung  by  a  fly, 
May  I  wear  a  silk  tie  ? 
I  will  bind  it  as  high 

And  as  low  as   I'm  al<l<-. 
May  1  wear  a  silk  tie 

To-night  at  the  table  ?  " 

to  which  Mr.  Tatham  at  once  sent  this  answer  : 

"  The  tie  that  you  wear 

May  be  wholly  of  silk, 
Or  of  stuff  or  mohair, 
The  tie  that  you  wear  ; 
If  the  pain  you  can't  bear. 

Better  bathe  it  with  milk, 
I  he  tie  that  you  wear 

May   be  wholly  of  silk." 

One  of  the  boys  who  was  preparing  for  Oxford  was  called 
Ralli,  and  he  had  great  facility  as  a  planchette  writer.  11<- 
could  not  write  by  himself,  but  as  soon  as  anyone  else  put  their 
hands  on  planchette  at  the  same  time  as  he  did,  it  would  write 
like  mad.  The  things  it  wrote  seemed  to  be  nearly  always 
what  he  had  read  and  forgotten,  sometimes  an  article  from 
the  Figaro,  sometimes  a  passage  from  a  French  novel.  Some- 
times it  wrote  verse.  Ralli  was  a  fluent  poet,  but  wrote  better 
verse  without  the  aid  of  planchette  than  with.  Sometimes 
the  planchette  board  answered  his  questions,  but  with  a  flippant 
inconsequence. 

In  October  I  went  to  Cambridge  and  passed  into  Trinity, 
leaving  the  Little  Go  to  be  tackled  later.  I  had  rooms  in  Trinity 
Street.  Hubert  Cornish  was  at  King's.  I  was  to  go  in  for  the 
Modern  Language  Tripos,  which  meant  languages  about  as 
modern  as  Lc  Roman  Je  la  Rose  and  Chaucer.  I  went  to  a 
coach  for  mathematics,  but  this  was  sheer  waste  of  time,  as 
not  one  word  of  what  I  was  taught  ever  entered  my  brain,  nor 
did  I  improve  one  jot. 

I  belonged  to  two  debating  societies — the  Magpie  and 
Stump,  and  the  Decemviri — and  a  ed  to  speak  at  both  of  them 
quite  often  ;  and  to  a  society  where  one  read  out  papers,  called 


144  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

the  Chit-Chat.  I  also  belonged  to  the  A.D.C.,  and  played  the 
part  of  the  butler  in  Parents  and  Guardians,  and  that  of  the 
footman  in  the  Duchess  of  Bayswaler. 

In  the  summer  term,  during  the  May  week,  Hubert  Cornish, 
R.  Austen  Leigh,  and  myself  edited  an  ephemeral  newspaper 
called  the  Cambridge  ABC,  which  had  four  numbers  and  which 
contained  an  admirable  parody  of  Kipling  by  Carr-Bosanquet. 

Here  are  some  lines  from  it  : 

"  By  Matyushin  and  Wilczek-land  he  is  come  to  the  Northern  Pole, 
Whose  tap-roots  bite  on  the  Oolite  and  Palaeozoic  coal  : 
He  set  his  hand  and  his  haunch  to  the  tree,  he  plucked  it  up  by  the 

root, 
And  the  lines  of  longitude  upward  sprang  like  the  broken  chords  of 

a  lute  ; 
And  over  against  the  Hills  of  Glass  he  came  to  the  spate  of  stars, 
And  the  Pole  it  sank,  but  he  swam  to  bank  and  warmed  himself  on 

Mars  ; 
Till  he  came  to  the  Reeling  Beaches  between  the  night  and  the  day, 
Where   the   tall   king   crabs   like    hansom   cabs   and   the  black   bull 

lobsters  lay." 

Aubrey  Beardsley  was  just  becoming  known  as  an  artist, 
and  we  wrote  to  him  and  asked  him  to  design  a  cover,  never 
thinking  he  would  consent  to  do  so.  He  did,  for  the  modest 
sum  of  ten  guineas,  and  many  people  thought  it  was  a  clever 
parody  of  his  draughtsmanship. 

At  Trinity,  Carr-Bosanquet  was  the  shining  light  of  the 
Decemviri  Debating  Society.  At  Eton  he  had  edited  the 
Parachute,  which  was  far  the  best  schoolboy  periodical  that 
had  appeared  there  for  years,  and  had  written,  in  collaboration 
with  two  other  boys,  a  book  called  Seven  Summers,  about  Eton, 
which  was  afterwards  withdrawn  from  circulation  because  for 
some  reason  or  other  the  authorities  objected  to  it.  Next 
to  A  Day  of  my  Life  at  Eton  it  is  the  best  book  about  Eton 
life  that  has  ever  been  written,  and  the  only  book  of  its  kind. 
It  certainly  ought  to  be  republished.  The  curious  thing  is  that 
the  objections  to  it,  which  to  the  lay  mind  are  not  perceptible 
(for  a  more  harmless  book  was  never  written),  were  only  made 
after  it  had  been  published  for  some  time. 

Carr-Bosanquet  used  often  to  contribute  poems  of  a  light 
kind  about  topical  events  to  the  Eton  Chronicle,  and  at  Cam- 
bridge he  wrote  as  wittily  as  he  talked  and  spoke.  He  had 
rather  a  dry,  kind  sense  of  humour,  saltlike  sense,  and  an  Attic 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON        145 

wit,  which  pervaded   his   talk,  his  speeches,  his  finished  and 
scholarly  verse.     We  thought  he  was  certain  to  be  a  bright 
star  in  English  literature,  a  successor  to  Praed  and  Calverley, 
and  perhaps  to  Charles  Lamb  ;  but  his  career  was  distinguished 
in  another  line — archaeology — and  he  allowed  himself  no  rival 
pursuit.     Had  he  opted  for  literature,  and  the  province  of  the 
witty  essay  and  the  light  rhyme,  he  certainly  could  have  achieved 
great  things,  as  he  had  already  done  far  more  than  show  promise. 
His  performance  as  far  as  it  went  was  already  mature,  finished, 
and  of  a  high  order.     There  was  at  Trinity  and  at  King's  at 
this  time,  as  I  suppose  there  is  at  all  times,  a  small  but  highly 
intellectual    world,   of    which    the   apex  was  the  mysterious 
Society  of   the  Apostles,  who  discussed  philosophy  in  secret. 
I   skirted   the   fringe    of   this   world,    and   knew   some  of   its 
members  :    Bertrand    Russell,    the     mathematician  ;     Robert 
Trcvelyan,  the  poet  ;  and  others.     One  day,  one  of  these  in- 
tellectuals explained  to  me  that  I  ought  not  to  go  to  Chapel,  as 
it  was  setting  a  bad  example.     Christianity  was  exploded,  a 
thing  of  the  past  ;  nobody  believed  in  it  really  among  the  young 
and  the  advanced,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  old-fashioned  and  the 
unregenerate  I  was  bidden  to  set  an  example  of  sincerity  and 
courage,  and  soon  the  world  would  follow  suit.     I  remember 
thinking  that   although   I  was   much  younger  in   years  than 
these  intellectuals,  and  far  inferior  in  knowledge,  brains,  and 
wits,  no  match  for  them  in  argument  or  in  achievement,  I  was 
none  the  less  older  than  they  were  in  a  particular  kind  of  experi- 
ence— the  experience  that  has  nothing  to  do  either  with  the 
mind,  or  with  knowledge,  and  that  is  independent  of  age,  but 
takes  place  in  the  heart,  and  in  which  a  child  may  be  sometimes 
more  rich  than  a  grown-up  person.     I  do  not  mean  anything 
sentimental.     I   am   speaking  of  the   experience  that   comes 
from  having  been  suddenly  constrained  to  turn  round  and  look 
at  life  from  a  different  point  of  view.     So  when  I  heard  the 
intellectuals  reason  in  the  manner  I  have  described,  I  felt  for 
the  moment  an  old  person  listening  to  young  people.     I  felt 
young  people  must  always  have  talked  like  that.     It  was  not 
that  I  had  then  any  definite  religious  creed.     I  seldom  went  to 
Chapel,  but  that  was  out  of  laziness.     I  seldom  went  to  church 
in  London,  and  never  of  my  own  accord. 

While  I  was  at  Heidelberg  the  religious  tenets  which  I  had 
kept  absolutely  intact  since  childhood,  without  question  and 
10 


146  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

without  the  shadow  of  doubt  or  difficulty,  suddenly  one  day, 
without  outside  influence  or  inward  crisis,  just  dropped  away 
from  me.  I  shed  them  as  easily  as  a  child  loses  a  first  tooth. 
In  the  winter  of  1893,  when  I  came  back  from  Berlin,  someone 
asked  me  why  I  didn't  go  to  church.  I  said  it  was  because  I 
didn't  believe  in  a  Christian  faith,  and  that  if  I  were  ever  to 
again  I  would  be  a  Catholic.  That  seemed  to  me  the  only 
logical  and  indeed  the  inevitable  consequence  of  such  a  belief. 
In  spite  of  this,  dogmatic  disbelief  was  to  me  always  an  in- 
tolerable thing,  and  when  I  heard  the  intellectuals  talk  in  the 
manner  I  have  described,  I  used  to  feel  that  people  like  Dr. 
Johnson  had  known  better  than  they,  but  that  in  his  day  it 
was  probable  that  the  young  and  he  himself  talked  like  that ; 
it  was  one  of  the  privileges  of  youth.  I  did  not  say  this, 
however.  I  kept  my  thoughts  to  myself.  I  remember  my 
spoken  answer  being  that  I  did  not  care  if  my  landlady  thought 
an  upright  poker  placed  in  front  of  the  fire  made  it  burn  or  not. 
If  she  liked  to  believe  that,  it  was  her  affair.  I  didn't  mind  if 
she  worshipped  the  poker. 

At  King's  my  great  friends  were  Hubert  Cornish,  Ramsay, 

who  was  afterwards  Lower  Master  at  Eton,  and  R A , 

the  son  of  a  distinguished  soldier.  A.  was  the  most  original  of 
all  the  undergraduates  I  knew.  He  was  a  real  scholar,  with 
the  most  eclectic  and  rather  austere  taste  in  literature,  and  a 
passion  for  organ  music.  He  was  shy  and  fastidious  beyond 
words.  He  could  not  endure  being  shaved  at  Cambridge,  and 
used  to  go  up  to  London  twice  a  week  for  that  purpose.  He 
took  no  part  in  any  of  the  clubs  or  societies.  At  the  same 
time  he  was  a  devoted  friend  and  a  fiery  patriot.  He  was  so 
difficult  to  please  about  his  own  work  that  when  he  went  up  for 
his  Tripos  and  had  to  do  a  set  of  Latin  hexameters,  he  showed 
up  a  series  of  unfinished  lines,  "  pathetic  half-lines,"  a  suggested 
end  of  hexameter,  a  possible  beginning,  the  hint  of  a  caesura, 
a  few  epithets,  and  here  and  there  an  almost  perfect  line,  with 
a  footnote  to  say  "  these  verses  are  not  meant  to  scan."  He 
was  a  bibliophile,  but  collected  faded  second  editions  and  never 
competed.  He  had  a  passionate  admiration  for  Thomas  Hardy's 
works,  and.  a  great  deference  for  the  opinion  of  his  friends. 
One  day  when  he  was  discussing  literature  with  Hubert  Cornish, 
Hubert  said  he  liked  a  book  which  A.  disliked.  When  A.  heard 
this  he  said  gently :  "Of  course  if  you  like  it,  Hubert,  I  like  it  too." 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       147 

This  all  happened  in  the  period  of  the  'nineties.     When 

people  write  about  the  'nineties  now,  which  they  often  do, 
they  seem  to  me  to  weave  a  1m-.  1<>s  Legend  and  to  create  a 
fantastic  world  of  their  own  creation.  The  nineties  were,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  art  and  literature,  much  like  any  other 
period.  If  you  want  to  know  what  literary  conversation  was 
like  in  the  'nineties  you  can  hear  it  any  day  at  the  Reform  Club. 
If  you  compare  the  articles  on  literature  or  art  that  appeared 
in  the  Speaker  of  1892-3  with  the  articles  in  the  New  Statesman 
of  1921,  you  will  find  little  difference  between  the  two. 
The  difference  between  the  Yellow  Book  and  periodicals  of  the 
'-.line  kind  (The  Owl,  for  instance),  which  were  started  years 
later,  was  chiefly  in  the  colour  of  the  cover.  The  fact  is  there 
are  only  a  certain  number  of  available  writers  in  London, 
and  whenever  a  new  periodical  i>  started,  all  the  available 
writers  are  asked  to  contribute  ;  so  in  the  Yellow  Book  you  had 
practically  the  available  writers  of  the  time  contributing — 
Henry  James,  Edmund  Gosse,  George  Moore,  Crackenthorpe, 
William  Watson,  John  Davidson,  John  Oliver  Hobbes,  Vernon 
Lee,  Le  Gallienne,  Arthur  Benson,  Arthur  Symons,  and  Max 
Beerbohm.  I  think  there  is  seldom  any  startling  difference 
between  the  literature  of  one  decade  and  another.  When 
I  was  at  Cambridge,  England  was  said  by  the  newspapers  to 
be  a  nest  of  singing  birds  ;  again  the  same  thing  was  said  when 
the  Georgian  poets  began  to  publish  their  work  ;  but  the  same 
thing  might  be  said  of  any  epoch.  Throughout  the  whole  of 
English  liistory  there  never  has  been  a  period,  as  yet,  when 
England  was  not  a  nest  of  singing  birds,  and  when  a  great 
quantity  of  verse,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  was  not  being 
poured  out.  But  it  was  said  in  the  'nineties  that  poetry  was  a 
paying  business  ;  second-hand  booksellers  were  speculating 
in  the  first  editions  of  the  new  poets,  just  as  they  do  now  ;  ami 
to  get  the  complete  works  of  one  poet,  who  had  published 
little,  one  had  to  pay  a  hundred  pounds.  A  society  called  the 
Rhymers1  Club  published  two  books  called  respectively  the 
Book  of  the  Rhymers'  Club,  and  the  Second  Book  of  the  Rhymers' 
Club,  both  of  which  were  anthologies  by  living  authors,  and 
somewhat  the  same  in  intern  ion  as  the  Books  of  Georgian  Poetry. 
Both  these  books  are  now  rare  and  sought  after  by  collectors. 
It  is  interesting  to  look  at  them  now,  and  to  look  back  in  general 
on  the  poets  of  that  day,  and  to  see  what  has  survived  and  what 


1 48  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

has  been  forgotten.  These  two  anthologies  by  no  means 
represented  the  whole  of  the  poetic  output  and  production  of 
the  day.  They  were  not  comprehensive  anthologies  of  all  the 
living  poets,  but  the  manifesto  of  one  small  Poetical  Club. 
Taking  a  general  bird's-eye  view  of  literature  and  the  literary 
world  of  that  day,  this  is  what  you  would  have  noted.  Tenny- 
son was  just  dead.  Swinburne  was  still  writing,  and  published 
some  of  the  finer  poems  of  his  later  manner  in  a  volume  called 
Astrophel,  in  1894.  Stevenson  was  alive,  and  had  just  published 
The  Ebb  Tide.  Meredith  had  but  lately  come  into  his  own, 
and  was  hailed  by  old  and  young.  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles 
had  enlarged  the  public  of  Thomas  Hardy.  Robert  Bridges 
was  issuing  fastidious  pamphlets  of  verse  printed  by  Mr.  Beech- 
ing  at  Oxford.  Christina  Rossetti  was  alive.  Mr.  Kipling 
published  what  are  perhaps  his  greatest  achievements  in  the 
short  story  in  Life's  Handicap  in  1891,  and  his  Many  Inventions 
came  out  in  1892.  His  Barrack  Room  Ballads  were  published 
in  1892.  His  loud  popularity  among  the  public  was  endorsed 
by  critics  such  as  Henry  James,  Edmund  Gosse,  and  Andrew 
Lang.  Andrew  Lang  was  still  writing  "  books  like  Genesis  and 
sometimes  for  the  Daily  News,"  besides  a  monthly  causerie  in 
Longman's  Magazine,  and  a  weekly  causerie  in  the  Illustrated 
London  News.  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  David  Grieve  was  pub- 
lished in  1892  and  acclaimed  b}'  the  whole  press.  Edmund 
Gosse  was  collecting  and  preparing  a  volume  of  the  verse  of  his 
maturity  (published  in  1894),  and  once  a  year  produced  a 
volume  of  delicate  and  perspicuous  prose.  Henley  was  writing 
patriotic  verse  and  barbed  prose  in  the  National  Observer,  which 
was  full  of  spirited,  scholarly  and  brilliant  writing.  Charles 
Whibley  was  making  a  name.  Max  Beerbohm  was  making  his 
d^but.  William  Watson  was  discovered  as  a  real  new  poet,  and 
his  "  Wordsworth's  Grave,"  and  his  "  Lachrymae  Musarum  "  won 
praise  from  the  older  cntics,  and  attracted,  for  verse,  great  atten- 
tion. He  was  named  as  a  possible  laureate.  John  Davidson  was 
said  to  have  inspiration  and  fire,  and  to  have  written  a  fine 
ballad;  Norman  Gale's  Country  Lyrics  were  praised;  Arthur 
Benson  represented  the  extreme  right  of  English  poetry,  and 
Arthur  Symons  the  extreme  left.  Wilde  had  published  a  play 
in  French,  and  his  Lady  Windermere's  Fan  was  hailed  as  the 
best  comedy  produced  on  the  English  stage  since  Congreve. 
Pinero  had  startled  London  with  his  Second  Mrs.   Tanqueray 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       149 

and  the  discovery  of  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell.  In  the  Speaker 
Quiller-Couch  wrote  a  weekly  causerie,  and  Georg<  Moore  pal 
some   of    his   best    work   in   weekly  articles   on    art,  and    Mr. 

Walkley  some  of  his  wittiest  writing  in  weekly  articles  on  the 
stage.  Henry  James  was  struggling  with  the  stage,  and  John 
Oliver  Hobbes  was  making  a  name  as  a  coiner  of  epigrams. 
Harry  Cust  was  editing  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  and  concocting 
delightful  leaders  out  of  the  classics,  with  fantastic  titles.  E.  E. 
Benson  had  published  Dodo.  Turning  from  the  general  to  the 
particular,  and  to  the  Book  of  the  Rhymers'  Club,  published  in 
1892,  the  names  of  the  contributors  were  :  Ernest  Dowson, 
Edwin  Ellis,  C.  A.  Greene,  Lionel  Johnson,  Richard  le  Gallienne, 
Victor  Plarr,  Ernest  Radford,  Ernest  Rhys,  T.  \Y.  Rolleston, 
Arthur  Symons,  John  Todhunter,  and  W.  B.  Yeats.  In  the 
second  series  the  same  names  occur  with  an  additional  one — 
Arthur  Cecil  Hillier. 

A  reaction  against  supposed  foreign  influences  was  started 
and  preached,  and  Richard  le  Gallienne  called  his  book  of  verse 
English  Lyrics  to  accentuate  this  ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  find  any 
trace  of  this  foreign  influence  in  the  verse  of  that  day,  except  in 
some  of  the  poems  of  Arthur  Symons.  When  people  write  of 
the  'nineties  now,  they  say  that  the  verse  of  that  period  is  all 
about  pierrots,  powder,  and  patchouli.  The  reason  is  perhaps 
that  the  most  startling  feature  in  the  creative  art  of  the  period 
was  the  genius  of  Aubrey  Beardsley,  whose  perfect  draughtsman- 
ship seemed  to  be  guided  by  a  malignant  demon.  I  have  looked 
through  the  Books  of  the  Rhymers'  Club  carefully,  and  I  cannot 
find  a  single  allusion  to  a  pierrot,  or  even  to  a  powder-puff. 
Here  are  the  titles  of  some  of  the  subjects  :  "  Carmelite  Nuns 
of  Perpetual  Adoration  "  ;  "  Love  and  Death  "  ;  "  The  Path- 
finder "  ;  "  The  Broken  Tryst  "  ;  "A  Ring's  Secret  "  ;  "A 
Burden  of  Easter  Vigil  "  ;  "  Father  Gilligan  "  ;  "  In  Falmouth 
Harbour  "  ;  "  Mothers  of  Men  "  ;  "  Sunset  in  the  City  "  ; 
"Lost";  "To  a  Breton  Beggar";  "Song  in  the  Labour 
Movement  "  ;  "  Saint  Anthony  "  ;  "  Lady  Macbeth  "  ;  Mid- 
summer Day  "  ;  "  The  Old  Shepherd  "  ;  "  The  Night  Jar  "  ; 
"  The  Song  of  the  Old  Mother  "  ;  "  The  First  Spring  Day  "  ; 
"An  Ode  to  Spring."  These  subjects  seem  to  me  singularly 
like  those  that  have  inspired  poets  of  all  epochs  ;  it  is  difficult 
to  deted  anything  peculiar  to  the  'nineties  in  a  title  such  as 
"  The  First  Spring" Day,"  or  "  A  Ring  s  Secret.** 


150  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

The  first  Rhymers'  Book  contains  Yeats'  exquisite  poem  on 
the  Lake  of  Innisfree,  and  some  dignified  verse  by  Lionel 
Johnson  ;  the  second  series  contains  a  well-known  poem  by 
Ernest  Dowson  :  "I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara,  in  my 
fashion."  But  I  think  I  am  right  in  saying  that  it  was  neither 
Yeats  nor  Lionel  Johnson  nor  Dowson 's  work  in  these  antho- 
logies that  attracted  the  greatest  attention,  but  a  lyric  of  Le 
Gallienne's  called  "  What  of  the  Darkness  ?  "  which  I  remember 
one  critic  said  wiped  out  Tennyson's  lyrics.  Tennyson's  lyrics, 
however,  went  on  obstinately  existing,  no  doubt  so  as  to  give 
another  generation  the  pleasure  of  thinking  that  they  had 
wiped  them  out.  While  these  singing  birds  were  twittering, 
I  remember  one  day  at  Cambridge  buying  a  new  book  of  verse 
by  a  man  called  Francis  Thompson.  Here,  I  thought,  is  an- 
other of  the  hundreds  of  new  poets,  but  directly  I  caught  sight 
of  the  "  Hound  of  Heaven,"  I  thought  to  myself  "  Here  is  some- 
thing different."  I  remember  showing  Hubert  Cornish  a  poem 
called  "  Daisy,"  and  saying  to  him,  "  Isn't  this  very  good  ?  ' 
It  begins  : 

"  Where  the  thistle  lifts  a  purple  crown 
Six  foot  out  of  the  turf, 
And  the  harebell  shakes  on  the  windy  hill, 
O  the  breath  of  the  distant  surf." 

"  Yes,"  said  Hubert,  "  but  the  trouble  is  that  everyone 
writes  so  well  nowadays  that  it  is  hardly  worth  while  for  any 
new  poet  to  write  well.  All  can  raise  the  flower  because  all  have 
got  the  seed." 

The  undergraduates  had  no  great  enthusiasm  for  any  of 
these  new  writers.  I  mean  the  intellectuals  among  the  under- 
graduates. But  the  booksellers  were  always  urging  us  to  buy 
them  on  the  plea  that  they  would  go  up.  Some  of  them  did, 
and  those  who  speculated  in  Francis  Thompson  and  Yeats  did 
well.  The  curious  thing  is  that  the  prose  writers  and  the 
poets  were  supposed  to  be  great  sticklers  for  form,  to  be 
absorbed  by  the  theory  of  art  for  art's  sake,  and  to  be 
aiming  at  impeccable  craftsmanship.  Looking  back  on  the 
work  of  those  poets  now,  their  technique,  compared  to  that 
of  more  modern  poets,  seems  almost  ludicrously  feeble,  but 
they  seem  to  have  had  just  what  they  were  supposed  to  be 
without  :  a  burning  ideal  to  serve  literature  ;  to  have  been 
consumed  with  the  desire  to  bring  about   a   renaissance    in 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       151 

English  literature  and  an  English  renaissance.  There  was  one 
poet's  name  which  was  sometimes  mentioned  then,  and  which 
had  comedown  to  the  'nineties  from  other  and  older  generations. 
The  name  has  gone  on  being  mentioned  since, and  will  one  day, 
I  think,  reach  the  safe  harbour  of  la-ting  fame,  and  this  was 
Michael  Field.  Michael  Field  was  a  pseudonym  which  covered 
the  remarkable  personalities  of  two  ladies,  an  aunt  and  a  niece, 
who  were  friends  of  Robert  Browning  and  of  all  the  literary 
lights  of  their  day,  and  who  wrote  a  series  of  most  remarkable 
dramas  in  verse  and  some  extremely  beautiful  lyrics. 

John  Lane,  the  publisher,  used  to  come  down  to  Cambridge 
sometimes,  and  I  made  his  acquaintance  and,  through  him  and 
Mr.  Gosse,  that  of  many  of  the  writers  I  have  mentioned  : 
Jolin  Davidson,  Le  Gallicnne,  and  others.  There  was  a  society 
at  this  time  in  London  (ailed  the  Cemented  Bricks,  to  which 
some  of  the  litterateurs  and  poets  belonged,  which  met  at 
Anderton's  Hotel  in  Fleet  Street,  and  I  was  made  a  member, 
and  on  one  occasion  made  a  speech,  and  was  down  to  read 
a  paper,  but  I  had  to  go  abroad  and  this  never  came  off.  But 
what  I  chiefly  remember  about  it  is  one  occasion  when  Le 
Gallicnne  read  a  paper  in  which  he  passionately  attacked  the 
theory  of  art  for  art's  sake,  and  insisted  on  the  relative  unim- 
portance of  art  compared  with  Nature,  saying  that  a  branch  of 
almond  blossom  against  the  sky  was  worth  all  the  pictures  in 
the  world.  His  paper  was  answered  a  month  later  by  a  young 
man  who  said  this  was  the  most  Philistine  sentiment  he  had 
ever  heard  expressed.     Tlvis  was  while  I  was  at  Cambridge. 

I  did  little  work  at  Cambridge,  and  from  the  Cambridge 
curriculum   I  learnt  nothing.     I  attended  lectures  on  mathe- 
matics which  might  just  as  well  have  been,  for  the  good  they 
did  me,  in  Hebrew.     I  spent  hours  with  a  coach  who  wearily 
explained  to  me  things  which   I  didn't   and  couldn't   under- 
stand.    I  went  to  some  lectures  on  French  literature,  but  all  I 
remember  of  them  is  that  the  lecturer  demonstrated  al  -"me 
length  that  the  French  written  by  many  well-known  authors 
was    often    ungrammatical    and    sometimes    full    of    mistak 
The  lecturer  cited  to  support  his  case  pages  of  Georges  Ohnet. 
One    hardly   needed    a    Lecturer    to    point    out    that    Georges 
Ohnet  was  not  a  classical  writer.     The  lecturer's  aim  was  not 
to  show  the  badness  of  certain  authors,  but  to  prove  that  the 
French  of  modem  current  literature  was  an  independent  living 


152  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

organism  that  was  growing  and  developing  heedless  of  classical 
models,  grammatical  rules,  and  academic  authority.  I  think 
he  would  have  done  better  had  he  pointed  out  how  certain 
other  authors  were  writing  prose  and  verse  of  so  great  an  ex- 
cellence that  in  the  course  of  time  their  works  might  become 
classics.  Boileau  was  one  of  the  books  to  be  read  for  the  Tripos, 
and  I  had  already  read  a  great  deal  of  Boileau  and  learnt  his  verse 
by  heart  as  a  child.     I  copied  out  the  following  lines  in  1888  : 

"  H61as !  qu'est  devenu  ce  temps,  cet  heureux  temps, 
Ou  les  rois  s'honoraient  du  nom  de  faindants; 
S'endormaient  sur  le  trone,  et,  me  servant  sans  honte, 
Laissaient  leur  sceptre  aux  mains  ou  d'un  maire  ou  d'un  comte  ? 
Aucun  soin  n'approchait  de  leur  paisible  cour  : 
On  reposait  la  nuit,  on  dormait  tout  le  jour. 
Seulement  au  printemps,  quand  Flore  dans  les  plaines 
Faisaient  taire  des  vents  les  bruyantes  haleines, 
Quatre  bceufs  atteles,  d'un  pas  tranquille  et  lent, 
Promeriaient  dans  Paris  le  monarque  indolent." 

When  I  told  Dr.  Verrall  that  we  were  reading  Boileau  he  was 
delighted.  He  said :  "  How  I  wish  I  was  reading  Boileau  ; 
instead  of  which,  when  I  have  time  to  read,  I  read  the  latest 
Kipling  story."  He  said  he  spent  his  life  in  vain  regret  for 
the  books  he  wanted  to  read,  but  which  he  knew  he  never 
would  read.  He  could  not  help  reading  the  modern  books, 
but  he  often  deplored  the  sad  necessity.  I  stuck  up  for  the 
modern  books  ;  I  said  I  would  far  rather  read  Kipling  than 
Boileau.  I  supposed  in  Boileau 's  time  people  said  :  "  Here  I 
am,  wasting  my  time  reading  Boileau,  which  I  must  read  so  as 
to  follow  the  conversation  at  dinner,  when  I  might  be  reading 
le  Roman  de  la  Rose." 

Dr.  Verrall  was  an  amusing  story-teller,  and  I  remember 
his  telling  a  story  of  two  old  ladies  who,  while  they  were 
listening  to  the  overture  of  Lohengrin,  looked  at  each  other 
with  a  puzzled,  timid  expression,  until  one  of  them  asked 
the  other :  "  Is  it  the  gas  ?  "  Dr.  Verrall  told  me  he 
thought  Rossetti's  poem,  the  "  Blessed  Damozel,"  was 
rubbish.  On  the  other  hand,  he  admired  his  ballad,  "  Sister 
Helen." 

He  said  :  "  Why  did  you  melt  your  waxen  man,  Sister 
Helen  ?  "  was  a  magnificent  opening  to  a  poem. 

In  spite  of  having  learnt  nothing  in  an  academic  sense  at 
Cambridge,  I  am  glad  I  went  there,  and  I  think  I  learnt  a  good 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       153 

deal  in  other  ways.  I  look  back  on  it  and  I  see  the  tall  trees 
just  coming  out  in  the  backs,  behind  King's  College  ;  a  picnic 
in  canoes  on  the  Cam;  bookshop-.  1  ;  <  i.tlly  a  dark,  long 
bookshop  in  Trinity  Street  where  a  plaintive  voice  told  one 
that  Norman  Gale  would  be  sure  to  go  up  ;  little  dinner-parties 
in  my  rooms  in  Trinity  Street,  the  food  arriving  on  a  tray  from 
the  College  kitchen  where  the  cook  made  crime  brulie  better 
than  anyone  else  in  the  world;  one  night  fireworks  on  the  window- 
sill  and  the  thin  curtains  ablaze ;  rehearsals  for  the  A.D.C., 
and  Mr.  Clarkson  making  one  up  ;  long,  idle  mornings  in 
Trinity  and  King's;  literary  discussions  in  rooms  at  Trinity; 
debates  of  the  Decemviri  in  Carr-Bosanquet's  room  on  the 
ground  floor  of  the  Great  Court  ;  summer  afternoons  in 
King's  College  gardens,  and  the  light  streaming  through  the 
gorgeous  glass  of  the  west  window  in  King's  Chapel,  where, 
listening  to  the  pealing  anthem,  I  certainly  never  dreamed  of 
taxing  the  royal  Saint  with  vain  expense  ;  gossip  at  the  Pitt 
Club  in  the  mornings,  crowds  of  youths  with  well-brushed  hair 
and  straw  hats  telling  stories  in  front  of  the  fireplace  ;  the 
Sunday-evening  receptions  in  Oscar  Browning's  rooms  full  of 
Arundel  prints  and  crowds  of  long-haired  Bohemians  ;  the 
present  Provost  of  Eton  mimicking  the  dons  ;  and  the  endless 
laughter  of  those  who  could  say  : 

"  We  were  young,  we  were  merry,  we  were  very,   very  wise, 
And  the  door  stood  open  to  our  feast." 

I  left  Cambridge  after  my  first  summer  term  as  I  could  not 
pass  the  Little  Go,  nor  could  I  ever  have  done  so,  had  I  stayed 
at  Cambridge  for  years.  My  life  during  the  next  five  years 
was  a  prolonged  and  arduous  struggle  to  pass  the  examina- 
tion into  the  Diplomatic  Service.  When  I  left  Cambridge  I 
went  to  Versailles,  and  stayed  there  a  month  to  work  at 
French.  Then  after  a  few  days  at  Contrexe\nlle,  with  my 
father,  I  went  back  to  Hildesheim  and  stopped  at  Bayreuth 
on  the  way. 

That  year  Parsifal  and  Tannliiiitscr  were  given,  and  for  the 
first  time  at  Bayreuth,  Lohengrin.  Mottl  conducted  ;  Vandyk 
sang  the  part  of  Lohengrin.  When  I  arrived  at  the  station, 
after  a  long  night's  journey,  I  was  offered  a  place  for  the  per- 
formance of  Parsifal  that  afternoon.  I  took  it,  but  I  was  SO 
tired  after  the  journey  thai  1  fell  asleep  during  the  first  act,  and 


154  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

slept  so  soundly,  that  at  the  end  of  the  act,  I  had  to  be  shaken 
before  I  woke  up.  In  the  third  act,  it  will  be  remembered  that 
Lohengrin,  when  he  reveals  his  parentage,  his  occupation,  and 
his  name,  at  Elsa's  ill-timed  request,  mentions  that  his  father's 
name  was  Parsifal.  A  German  lady  who  was  sitting  near  me, 
when  she  heard  this,  gave  a  gasp  of  relief  and  recognition,  as 
if  all  were  now  plain,  and  sighed  :    "  Ach  der  Parsifal ! " 

At  Leipzig  I  ran  short  of  money,  and  nobody  would 
cash  me  a  cheque,  as  I  could  not  satisfy  either  the  Hotel 
or  the  Bank  or  the  British  Consul  (Baron  Tauchnitz)  that 
I  was  who  I  claimed  to  be.  I  telegraphed  to  the  Timmes 
for  money,  and  they  sent  it  to  the  Bank  for  me  by  telegram, 
but  even  then  the  Bank  refused  to  give  it  to  me,  as  they  were 
doubtful  of  my  identity.  Finally  I  got  the  Timmes  to  tele- 
graph it  to  the  Hotel.  The  Consul  was  annoyed,  and  said  that 
Englishmen  always  appeared  to  think  they  could  go  where 
they  liked  and  do  what  they  liked.  I  told  him  this  was  the 
case,  and  I  had  always  supposed  it  to  be  the  duty  of  a  British 
Consul  to  help  them  to  do  so.  I  stayed  at  Hildesheim  till  Mr. 
Scoones'  establishment  for  candidates  for  the  Diplomatic  Service 
examination  opened  at  Garrick  Chambers  in  London  in  Sep- 
tember. The  examination  for  the  Diplomatic  Service  was 
competitive.  Candidates  had  to  qualify  in  each  of  twelve 
subjects,  which  included  three  modern  languages,  Latin, 
modern  history,  geography,  arithmetic,  precis-writing,  English 
essay-writing,  and  shorthand.  The  standard  in  French  and 
German  was  high,  and  the  most  difficult  task  was  the  trans- 
lation of  a  passage  from  a  Times  leading  article  into  French  and 
German  as  it  was  dictated.  Life  at  Scoones'  meant  going  to 
lectures  from  ten  till  one,  and  again  in  the  afternoon,  and  being 
crammed  at  home  by  various  teachers.  Mr.  Scoones  was  a  fine 
organiser  and  an  acute  judge  of  character.  He  was  half  French, 
and  his  personality  was  electric  and  fascinating ;  he  was 
light  in  hand,  amusing,  and  full  of  point.  He  used  to  have 
luncheon  every  day  at  the  Garrick  Club,  which  was  next  door  to 
Garrick  Chambers,  and  he  lectured  himself  on  French.  He  was 
assisted  by  the  Rev.  Dawson  Clarke,  who  in  vain  tried  to  teach 
me  arithmetic,  and  did  manage  to  teach  me  enough  geography, 
after  five  years,  to  qualify,  and  Mr.  J.  Allen,  who  gave  us  brilliant 
lectures  on  modern  history.  There  was  also  a  charming  French 
lecturer,    M.   Esclangon,   who   corrected    our    French   essays. 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       155 

The   first    time  I  wrote  him   an   essay  he  wrote  on  it  :    "  Lc 
Francais  esl  dod  seulement  pur  mais  elegant." 

I  lived  alone  in  a  room  at  the  top  of  37  Charles  Street,  and 
worked  in  the  winter  months  extremely  hard.  Special  coaches 
used  to  come  to  me,  and  special  teachers  of  arithmetic.  One  of 
them  had  a  new  system  of  teaching  arithmetic,  which  was  sup- 
posed to  make  it  simple,  but  in  my  case  the  system  broke  down. 

Mr.  Scoones  told  my  father  after  I  had  been  there  a  little 
time  that  I  was  sure  to  pass  eventually. 

On  Sunday  evenings  I  used  often  to  have  supper  with 
Edmund  Gosse  at  his  house  in  Delamcre  Terrace,  and  there  I 
met  some  of  the  lights  of  the  literary  world  :  George  Moore, 
Rider  Haggard,  Henry  Harland,  and  Max  Becrbohm.  Some- 
times there  would  be  serious  discussions  on  literature  between 
George  Moore,  Edmund  Gosse,  and  Arthur  Symons.  I  re- 
member once,  when  Swinburne  was  being  discussed,  Arthur 
Symons  saying  that  there  was  a  period  in  everyone's  life  when 
one  thought  Swinburne's  poetry  not  only  the  best,  but  the  only 
poetry  worth  reading.  It  seemed  then  to  annihilate  all  other 
verse.  Edmund  Gosse  then  said  that  he  would  not  be  at  all 
surprised,  if  some  day  Swinburne's  verse  were  to  appear  almost 
unintelligible  to  future  generations.  He  thought  it  possible 
that  Swinburne  might  survive  merely  as  a  literary  curiosity, 
like  Cowley.  He  also  said  that  Swinburne  in  his  later  manner 
was  like  a  wheel  that  spun  round  and  round  without  any 
intellectual  cog. 

George  Moore  in  those  days  was  severe  on  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant, and  said  his  stories  were  merely  carved  cherry-stones. 
Edmund  Gosse  contested  this  point  hotly.  Still  more  amusing 
than  the  literary  discussions  were  those  occasions  when 
Edmund  Gosse  would  tell  us  reminiscences  of  his  youth,  when 
he  worked  as  a  boy  at  the  British  Museum,  and  of  the  early 
days  of  his  friendship  with  Swinburne. 

There  was  an  examination  for  the  Diplomatic  Service  that 
autumn,  and  I  was  given  a  nomination  for  it,  but  I  was  ill  and 
couldn't  compete. 

I  went  back  to  Hildesheim  for  Christmas.  Christmas  is 
the  captain  jewel  of  German  dome-tic  life,  and  no  one  who  has 
not  spent  a  Christmas  with  a  German  family  can  really  kr.<  W 
Germany,  ju>t  as  no  one  who  has  not  lived  through  the  Eastex 
festival  with  a  Russian  family  can  really  know  Russia.     It  is 


156  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

only  in  Germany  that  the  Christmas  tree  grows  in  its  full  glory. 
The  Christmas  tree  at  Hildesheim  was  laden  with  little  tangerine 
oranges  and  sprinkled  over  with  long  threads  of  silver  snow. 
When  it  was  lighted,  the  carol :  "  Stille  Nacht,  Heilige  Nacht," 
was  sung  round  it.  The  presents  were  arranged,  or  rather 
displayed,  on  a  table  under  the  tree  :  new  presents,  and  a 
present  of  many  years'  standing,  the  Puppenstube,  which  took 
on  a  new  life  every  Christmas  by  being  redecorated,  and  having 
the  small  kitchen  utensils  in  its  dolls'  kitchen  refurbished.  The 
presents  were  not  wrapped  up  in  parcels,  but  they  were  exposed 
to  the  full  view  of  those  who  were  about  to  receive  them,  and 
so  arranged  that  they  appeared  at  their  very  best,  as  though 
Santa  Claus  and  a  fairy  godmother  had  arranged  them  them- 
selves.    My  present  was  a  beautiful  embossed  dicky. 

On  New  Year's  Eve,  the  Christmas  tree  was  relit,  and  as  the 
bells  rang  for  New  Year,  we  clinked  glasses  of  punch  and  said  : 
'  Prosit  Nenjahr."  If  you  want  to  know  what  is  the  spirit  of 
a  German  Christmas  you  will  find  its  quintessence  distilled  in 
the  poem  of  Heine  about  "  Die  heil'gen  drei  Kon'ge  aus  Morgen- 
land,"  which  ends  : 

"  Der  Stern  blieb  stehn  iiber  Joseph's  Haus, 
Da  sind  sie  hineingegangen  ; 
Das  Ochslein  brullte,  das  Kindlein  schrie, 
Die  heil'gen  drei  Konige  sangen." 

While  I  was  going  through  this  complicated  and  protracted 
training,  the  date  of  the  examination  was,  of  course,  only  a 
matter  of  conjecture,  but  when  an  Ambassador  died  there 
was  always  an  atmosphere  of  excitement  at  Garrick  Chambers, 
and  on  Scoones'  face  one  could  clearly  read  that  something 
momentous  had  occurred.  As  a  rule  the  examinations 
happened  about  once  a  year.  Having  missed  my  first  chance, 
which  was  fortunate,  as  I  was  woefully  unprepared,  I  had 
to  wait  a  long  time  for  my  second  chance,  and  I  spent 
the  time  between  London,  which  meant  Garrick  Chambers, 
Germany,  which  meant  Hildesheim,  and  Italy,  which  meant 
Madame  Traverso's  pension  at  Lung'Arno  della  Borsa  2  bis,  at 
Florence. 

One  night,  at  Edmund  Gosse's,  in  the  winter  of  1895,  Harland 
was  there,  and  the  conversation  turned  on  Anatole  France.  I 
quoted  him  some  passages  from  Le  Livre  de  Mon  Ami,  which  he 
had   not    read.     The   name   of   Anatole   France  had   not   yet 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       157 

been  mentioned  in  the  literary  press  <>f  London,  and  Harland 
said  to  me  :  "  Why  don't  yon  write  me  an  article  about  him 
and  I  Will  print  it  in  the  Yellow  Book  ?  '  The  Yellow  Book  by 
that  time  had  lost  any  elements  of  surprise  or  newness  it  had 
ever  had  and  had  developed  into  an  ordinary  review  to  which 
the  stock  writers  of  London  reviews  contributed.  I  said  I 
would  try,  and  I  wrote  an  article  on  Anatole  France,  which  was 
accepted  by  Harland  and  came  out  in  the  April  number.  This 
was  the  first  criticism  of  Anatole  France  which  appeared  in 
England.  In  the  same  number  there  was  a  story  by  Anatole 
France  himself,  and  a  long  poem  by  William  Watson.  When 
the  proof  of  my  article  came,  I  took  it  to  Edmund  Gosse,  and 
read  it  aloud  to  him  in  his  office  at  the  Board  of  Trade  in  White- 
hall. He  was  pleased  with  it,  and  his  meed  of  generous  and 
discriminating  praise  and  encouragement  was  extremely  welcome 
and  exhilarating.  He  said  there  was  a  unique  opportunity  for 
anyone  who  should  make  it  his  aim  and  business  to  write  grace- 
fully and  delicately  about  beautiful  and  distinguished  things, 
and  that  I  could  not  do  better  than  try  to  continue  as  I  had 
begun.  No  one  could  have  been  kinder  nor  more  encourag- 
ing. The  University  is  not  a  stimulating  place  for  aspiring 
writers.  The  dons  have  seen  it  all  before  so  many  times,  and 
heard  it  all  so  often  ;  the  undergraduates  are  so  terribly  in 
earnest  and  uncompromisingly  severe  about  the  efforts  of  their 
fellow-undergraduates ;  so  cocksure  and  certain  in  their  judg- 
ments, so  that  at  Cambridge  I  hid  my  literary  aspirations,  and 
when  I  left  it  I  had  partially  renounced  all  such  ambitions, 
thinking  that  I  had  been  deluding  myself,  but  at  the  same  time 
cherishing  a  hidden  hope  that  I  might  some  day  begin  again. 
Edmund  Gosse's  praise  kindled  the  smouldering  ashes  and 
prevented  them  from  being  extinguished,  although  I  was  too 
busy  learning  arithmetic,  geography,  and  long  lists  of  obscure 
terms  in  French  and  German  to  think  much  about  such 
things. 

One  night  that  winter  I  went  with  my  father  and  my  sisters 
to  the  first  night  of  the  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmitli  at  the  Gan 
Theatre.  Sir  John  Hare  and  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  both 
played  magnificently,  and  Mrs.  Campbell  enjoyed  .1  triumph. 
She  held  the  audience  .it  the  beginning  of  the  play  by  her  grace, 
and  by  her  quiet  magnetic  intensity,  and  then  swept  everyone 
off   their   feet    by   her   outbursts   of   vituperation.      Mr.    Shaw, 


158  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

writing  in  the  Saturday  Review  about  it,  said  that  one  of  the 
defects  of  the  play,  the  unreality  of  the  chief  female  character, 
had  "  the  lucky  effect  of  setting  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  free 
to  do  as  she  pleases  in  it,  the  result  being  an  irresistible  projec- 
tion of  that  lady's  personal  genius,  a  projection  which  sweeps 
the  play  aside  and  imperiously  becomes  the  play  itself.  Mrs. 
Patrick  Campbell,  in  fact,  pulls  her  author  through  by  playing 
him  clean  off  the  stage.  She  creates  all  sorts  of  illusions,  and 
gives  one  all  sorts  of  searching  sensations.  It  is  impossible 
not  to  feel  that  those  haunting  eyes  are  brooding  on  a  momentous 
past,  and  the  parting  lips  anticipating  a  thrilling  imminent 
future,  whilst  some  enigmatic  present  must  no  less  surely  be 
working  underneath  all  that  subtle  play  of  limb  and  stealthy 
intensity  of  tone."  After  the  third  act  the  audience  applauded 
deliriously,  and  the  next  day  the  critics  declared  unanimously 
that  Mrs.  Campbell  had  the  ball  at  her  feet.  They  all  prophesied 
that  this  was  the  beginning  of  undreamed-of  triumphs.  They 
little  dreamed  how  recklessly  she  would  lock  the  ball. 

At  Easter  I  went  to  Florence  once  more  and  stayed  there 
far  into  June.  I  think  it  was  that  year  I  spent  a  little  time  at 
Perugia.  One  day  I  drove  to  Assisi.  The  country  was  in  the 
full  glory  of  spring.  We  passed  groaning  carts  drawn  by  slow, 
white  oxen  ;  poppies  flared  in  the  green  corn  ;  little  lizards 
sunned  themselves  on  the  walls  ;  one  felt  one  was  no  longer  in 
Italy,  but  in  an  older  country,  in  Latium ;  in  some  little  kingdom 
in  which  Remus  might  have  been  king,  or  that  kindly  monarch, 
Numa  Pompilius,  with  Egeria,  his  gracious  consort.  I  saw  the 
Italy  that  I  had  dreamt  of  ever  since  as  a  child  I  had  read  with 
Mrs.  Christie  in  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome  of  "  where  sweet 
Clanis  wanders  through  corn  and  vines  and  flowers,"  of  milk- 
white  steer  grazing  along  Clitumnus,  and  the  struggling  sheep 
plunging  in  Umbro.  And  when  at  last  Assisi  appeared,  with 
its  shining  snow-white  basilica  crowning  the  hill  like  a  diadem, 
one  seemed  to  be  driving  up  to  a  celestial  city. 

On  the  18th  of  May,  life  was  made  exciting  by  an  earth- 
quake. It  happened  about'  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening.  We 
had  just  finished  dinner  at  the  pension.  I  had  walked  to  my 
bedroom  to  fetch  something,  when  there  came  a  noise  like  a 
gas  explosion  or  a  bomb  exploding,  and  I  was  thrown  on  to  my 
bed.  The  pictures  fell  from  the  walls,  and  the  ground  seemed 
to  be  slipping  away  from  one.     Outside  on  the  landing — we 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       159 

lived  on  the  second  floor  of  the  Palazzo  Alberti,  up  two  flights 
of  stairs — I  heard  the  servants  crying  :  "  Sono  i  Lathi  "  ("The 
tliieves  arc  uj)on  us  "),  and  there  was  a  s*  amper  down  the  stairs, 
as  the  maid  and  the  cook  rushed  down  to  bolt  the  front  door 
and  keep  out  the  thieves.  Then  various  objects  of  value  were 
saved,  or  at  least  a  mysterious  process  of  salvage  was  begun. 
A  box  containing  family  deeds  was  carried  from  one  room  to 
another,  and  some  American  children  were  carried  downstairs 
in  a  blanket.  The  shock,  I  think,  lasted  only  seven  seconds, 
but  had  been,  while  it  lasted,  intense.  Then  there  was  a  good 
deal  of  bustle  and  discussion,  and  everybody  suggested  some- 
thing different  that  ought  to  be  done;  and  Madame  Traverso 
carried  on  a  conversation  with  the  landlady  <>f  the  house,  who 
lived  on  the  first  floor.  Relations  between  the  two  households 
had  hitherto  been  strained,  and  a  state  of  veiled  hostilities  had 
existed  between  them.  The  earthquake  changed  all  this  and 
brought  about  a  reconciliation.  From  her  window  Madame 
Traverso  called  to  the  landlady  and  assured  her  that  we  were  : 
*'  Nelle  mani  di  Dio  "  ("  We  are  in  the  hands  of  God  ").  "  Si," 
answered  the  landlady:  "  Siatno  ncllc  mani  di  Dio"  ("Yes, 
we  are  in  the  hands  of  God  ").  Signora  Traverso  said  we  could 
not  sleep  in  the  house  that  night.  It  was  not  to  be  thought 
of,  and  we  joined  the  population  in  the  streets.  No  sooner  had 
people  begun  to  say  it  was  all  over,  and  that  we  could  quietly 
go  home,  than  another  faint  tremor  was  felt.  People  encamped 
in  carriages  ;  others  walked  about  the  streets.  The  terror 
inspired  by  an  earthquake  is  unlike  any  other,  because  you  feel 
there  is  no  possible  escape  from  it.  At  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
evening  there  was  another  faint  shock.  We  got  to  bed  late  ; 
some  of  the  inmates  of  the  pension  slept  in  a  cab.  The  next 
day  one  could  inspect  the  damage  done.  The  village  of 
Grassina  near  the  Certosa  had  been  destroyed.  I  had  just 
been  to  the  Certosa,  and  one  of  the  monks  there,  an  Irishman, 
when  we  asked  him  what  the  green  liqueur  was  made  of,  that 
he  sold,  said:  "Shamrocks  and  melted  emeralds."  Grassina 
was  a  village  where  on  Good  Friday  I  had  seen  the  proce^ion 
of  Gcsii  Morto  by  torchlight,  in  the  April  twilight,  with  its 
centurions  in  calico  and  armour,  its  tapers,  its  nasal  brasses 
and  piercing  lamentation,  and  crowd  of  nut-sellers  ;  a  ceremony 
as  old  as  the  soil,  and  said  to  be  a  new  incarnation  of  the 
funeral  of  Pan. 


160  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

The  Palazzo  Strozzi  was  rent  from  top  to  bottom  with  a 
huge  crack.  Pillars  in  Piazza  deH'Anunziata  had  fallen  down  ; 
and  at  San  Miniato,  the  school  of  the  Poggio  Imperiale  had  been 
seriously  damaged.  Had  the  shock  lasted  a  few  seconds  longer 
the  destruction  in  Florence  would  have  been  extremely  serious, 
and  many  irreplaceable  treasures  would  have  been  destroyed. 

The  afternoon  after  the  earthquake  I  bicycled  out  to  see 
Vernon  Lee,  and  she  said  that  the  butcher  boy  in  her  village 
declared  that  in  the  afternoon  before  the  earthquake  he  had 
seen  the  Devil  leap  from  a  cleft  in  the  ground  in  a  cloud  of 
sulphurous  fumes  and  fires.  In  the  night  there  was  another 
slight  shock  towards  one  in  the  morning.  I  was  asleep  and 
I  was  woken  suddenly,  and  experienced  the  strange  sensation 
of  feeling  the  floor  slightly  oscillating,  but  it  only  lasted  a 
second  or  two,  and  that  was  the  last  of  the  earthquake. 

I  made  that  year  the  acquaintance  of  Professor  Nencioni, 
a  poet  and  a  critic,  and  a  profound  student  of  English 
literature  and  English  verse.  He  was  saturated  with  English 
literature,  and  his  poems  show  the  influence  and  impress  of  the 
English  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  used  to  give 
lectures  on  English  poetry  in  Kalian  ;  he  was  a  stimulating, 
eloquent  lecturer,  and  his  knowledge  of  English  was  amazing. 
I  went  to  his  lectures  and  made  Ms  acquaintance,  and  we  had 
long  talks  about  literature.  He  asked  me  if  I  had  written 
anything,  and  I  told  him  I  had  some  typed  poems,  but  that  I 
had  given  up  trying  to  write  verse.  He  asked  me  to  show  them 
him.  The  next  time  I  went  to  his  lecture  I  took  my  typed 
MSS.  and  left  it  with  him.  The  next  Sunday  after  the  lecture 
he  came  up  to  me  with  the  MSS.  in  his  hand  and  said  :  "  Lei 
I  poeta,"  and  he  said  :  "  Never  mind  what  anyone  may  tell 
you,  /  tell  you  it  is  a  fact."  I  was  greatly  exhilarated  by 
Nencioni 's  encouragement,  but  I  thought  that  being  a  foreigner 
he  was  perhaps  too  indulgent,  and  I  would  have  felt  uncom- 
fortable had  a  Cambridge  undergraduate  overheard  his  con- 
versation. It  had  nevertheless  an  effect,  and  I  thought  that 
I  would  some  day  try  to  write  verse  again. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  summer,  I  went  back  to  Germany. 
Edward  Marsh  joined  me  at  Hildesheim  and  stayed  at  the 
Timmes'.  E.  was  the  most  painstaking  and  industrious 
pupil  Professor  Timme  ever  had,  and  he  enjoyed  the  German 
life  to  the  full,  but  it  was  Ms  misfortune  rather  than  his  fault 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       161 

that  he  offended  the  easily  ruffled  susceptibilities  of  the  Timme 
family. 

On  one  occasion  he  made  what  turned  out  to  be  an  un- 
fortunate remark  about  the  river  Innerste,  which  is  Hildesheim's 
river.  He  said  it  was  dirty  ;  upon  which  Professor  Timme, 
much  nettled,  said :  "  Das  will  ich  nicht  sagen.  Sie  ist  viel 
reiner  als  mancher  Fluss,  der  von  einer  Grosstadl  kommt,  und 
vielleicht  ganz  rein  aussieht."  [I  won't  say  that  ;  it  is  much 
cleaner  than  many  a  river  that  comes  from  a  big  town  and 
perhaps  looks  quite  clean.] 

There  was  a  delightful  German  pupil  living  in  the  house 
called  Erich  Wippern,  a  brother  of  Hans  Wippern,  who  had 
been  there  before.  We  arranged  to  give  a  Kneipe  for  him 
and  the  other  boys  in  one  of  the  villages.  The  matter  had  been 
publicly  discussed  and  seemed  to  be  settled,  but  at  the  last 
minute,  Professor  Timme  objected  to  it,  and  we  had  a  long  and 
painful  interview  on  the  subject.  He  said  the  Kneipe  was  not 
to  be,  and  when  I  reminded  him  that  he  had  already  given  his 
consent,  he  lost  his  temper.  We  decided  after  this  distressing 
scene  to  go  away,  and  we  left  for  Heidelberg,  our  ultimate 
objective  in  any  case,  the  next  day. 

E.  and  I  had  invented  a  game  which  I  think  I  enjoyed 
more  than  any  game  I  have  ever  played  at,  with  the  exception 
of  a  good  game  of  Spankaboo.  It  was  called  :  "  The  Game." 
You  played  it  like  this  :  One  player  gave  the  other  player  two 
lines  or  more  of  poetry,  or  a  sentence  of  prose,  in  any  language. 
The  other  player  was  allowed  two  guesses  at  the  authorship  of 
the  quotation,  and,  if  he  said  it  immediately  after  the  second 
guess,  breathlessly  so  to  speak,  a  third  guess;  but  there  must 
not  be  a  second's  pause  between  the  second  and  the  third. 
Tiny  had  to  be  "double  leads."  The  third  had  to  come,  if 
;it  all,  helter-skelter  after  the  second  guess.  If  you  guessed 
right  you  got  a  mark,  and  if  you  guessed  wrong  you  got  a 
nought  ;  the  noughts  and  crosses  were  entered  into  a  small 
book,  which  wont  on  getting  fuller  and  fuller.  They  were 
added  up  at  the  bottom  of  every  page;  but  as  The  Game 
is  eternal,  we  shall  never  know  who  won  it,  until  the  Li>t 
Day,  and  then  perhaps  there  won't  be  time.  We  both 
played  it  well  on  the  whole,  although  we  both  had  strange 
lapses.  I  never  could  guess  a  line  out  of  Lycidas  and  1. 
never  could  guess  a  line  out  of  Adonais.  I  attributed  one 
1 1 


162  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

day  one  of  the  finest  lines  of  Milton  to  the  poet  Montgomery, 
and  E.  made  an  equally  absurd  mistake,  which  happened  to 
have  a  profound  effect  on  my  future,  or  rather  on  my  future 
literary  aspirations.  We  were  playing  the  game  in  the  Bier- 
garten  at  Hildesheim.  The  band  was  playing  the  overture 
from  Tannhduser.  Schoolboys  were  walking  round  the  garden, 
arm  in  arm,  and  when  they  met  an  acquaintance  took  off  their 
hats  all  together,  in  time,  and  by  the  right,  or  by  the  left,  as  the 
case  might  be,  held  them  at  an  arm's  length  and  put  them  back 
stiffly.  At  many  little  tables,  groups  and  families  were  sitting 
enjoying  the  music,  drinking  beer  and  eating  Butterbrote.  I 
said  to  E. :  "  Who  is  this  by  in  The  Game  ?  "  which  was  the 
recognised  formula  for  saying  you  had  begun  to  play,  because 
the  game  began  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  conversation  and 
circumstance  quite  remote  from  it :  no  matter  how  inappro- 
priate or  inopportune.     The  lines  I  quoted  were  these  : 

"  Sank  in  great  calm,  as  dreaming  unison 
Of  darkness  and  midsummer  sound  must  die 
Before  the  daily  duty  of  the  Sun." 

"  Oh,"  said  E.,  without  any  hesitation,  "it's  magnificent — 
Shakespeare." 

"  No,"  I  said,  "  it  is  not  by  Shakespeare  ;  it  is  the  end  of  a 
sonnet  by  Maurice  Baring,  written  at  Hildesheim  in  1892." 

Now  I  had  shown  the  poem  in  which  these  lines  occurred 
with  others  to  some  undergraduates  at  Cambridge,  possibly  to 
E.  himself,  and  had  been  told  the  stuff  was  deplorable,  which  no 
doubt  it  was,  but  this  had  so  damped  my  spirits  that  I  had 
resolved  never  to  try  and  write  verse  again.  Then  came 
Nencioni's  praise  (who  had  marked  these  very  lines  in  blue 
pencil),  and  I  partially  reconsidered  my  decision.  Now  came 
this  incident,  which  opened  a  shut  door  for  me.  It  was  not 
that  I  didn't  know  that  in  this  Game  one  was  capable  of  any 
aberrations.  It  was  not  that  I  took  myself  seriously,  but 
the  mere  fact  of  E.  making  such  a  mistake  convinced  me  that 
mistakes  in  my  favour  were  possible.  Nencioni  might  be  right 
after  all.  In  any  case,  there  was  no  reason  why  I  should  not 
try ;  and  two  days  later  I  produced  a  sonnet,  which  E. 
entirely  approved  of,  and  which  I  afterwards  published. 

It  was  a  great  game  ;  it  included  not  only  verse  and  prose, 
but  sayings  of  great  and  small  men,  and  even  of  personal 


ITALY,  CAMBRIDGE,  GERMANY,  LONDON       163 

acquaintances.  We  were  both  at  our  best  in  guessing  things 
from  books  we  had  never  read.  I  had  an  unerring  ear  for  Zola's 
prose,  which  I  had  then  read  little  of,  and  E.,  whose  reading 
was  far  wider  and  deeper  than  mine,  was  very  hard  to  baffle 
except,  as  I  have  already  said,  by  quoting  Shelley's  Adonais, 
which  he  ended  by  learning  by  heart. 

At   Heidelberg   I  introduced  E.   to  Professor   Ihne.     Pro- 
fessor  Ihne,  confronted,  in  the  shape  of    E.,  with   an  under- 
graduate, or  rather  with  a  graduate,  who  had  just  taken  his 
degree,  and  had  won  academical  distinctions,  was  in  his  most 
Johnsonian  mood,  and  contradicted  him  even  when  he  agreed 
with  him.     He  asked  E.  what  degree  he  had  taken  at  Cambridge, 
and  when  E.  said  :    "  Palaeography,"  Ihne,  with  a  smile,  said  : 
"  Oh,  that's  all  nonsense."     The   Professor  turned  the  con 
versation  on  to  his  favourite  topic  :    the  superfluity  of  the 
Norman  element  in  the  English  language  ;  the  sad  occurrence 
of  the  word  pullulate  in  a  Times  article  was  mentioned,  and  E. 
made  a  spirited  defence  of  the  phrase :  "  Assemble  and  meet 
together,"  which  he  said  was  a  question  of  rhythm.     "  Pooh  !  " 
said  Ihne,  "  it's  only  association  makes  you  think  that."     The 
word  "  to  get,"  he  said,  was  used  to  denote  too  many  things. 
Poor  E.  was  interpellated,  as  if  he,  and  he  alone,  had  been 
responsible   for  the    shortcomings   of    the    English   language 
He   used,    said   Ihne,   the   word   education   when    he    meant 
instruction.     "  One   is   instructed  at    school,"   he    said.     He 
asked  E.  for  the  derivation  of  the  word  caterpillar.     E.  had 
no  suggestion  to  offer.     Ihne  said  he  derived  it  from  Kater 
and  to  pill,  but  he  had  also  given  Kadtpirifa  a  thought.     Then 
the  talk  veered   round  to  literature.     "  Schiller,"  said   Ihne, 
"  is  a  greater  dramatic  poet  than  Shakespeare.     Shakespeare's 
tragedies  are  too  painful  ;    King  Lear  and  Othello  are  unbear- 
able."    E.  said,  unwisely,  that  Schiller's  women  were  so  un- 
interesting.    Ihne  said  that  that  was  a  thing  E.  could  know 
nothing  about,  as  he  was  not  a  married  man.     For  his  part,  and 
he  had  been  a  married  man,  Schiller's  characters,  and  especially 
Thekla,  were  the  most  beautiful  women  characters  that  had 
ever  been  drawn.     E.  tried  to  defend  Shakespeare,  and  pointed 
out    the   qualities   of    Shakespeare's   women.      He    mentioned 
Portia.-    "  No,"  said  Ihne  ;    "  Portia  is  not  a  good  character, 
because  she  oversteps  her  duties  as  counsel  and  tries  to  play 
the  part  of  a  judge."     "  I  consider  Lord  Byron,"  said  Ihne, 


164  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

"  the  finest  English  poet  of  the  century."  E.  said  Byron  had 
a  great  sense  of  rhythm.  "  If  he  had  merely  a  great  sense  of 
rhythm,"  said  Ihne,  "  he  wouldn't  have  been  a  great  poet."  E., 
to  propitiate  him,  said  something  laudatory  about  Goethe's 
Faust.  Ihne  at  once  said  that  Schiller  was  a  greater  poet  than 
Goethe,  because  Faust  was  a  collection  of  detached  scenes,  and 
Schiller's  plays  were  complete  wholes. 

We  saw  Professor  Ihne  several  times,  and  what  I  have 
described  is  typical  of  all  our  conversations. 

After  staying  at  Heidelberg  for  about  a  week  I  went  back 
to  London,  and  the  routine  of  Garrick  Chambers  began  once 
more. 


CHAPTER    IX 
OXFORD  AND  GERMANY 

THE  time  soon  came  when  I  had  to  go  up  for  my  first 
examination,  and  before  it  there  was  a  period  of  in- 
tensive cramming.  I  had  scores  of  teachers,  and  spent 
hour  after  hour  taking  private  lessons  in  Latin,  German,  short- 
hand, and  arithmetic.  A  great  deal  of  this  cramming  was  quite 
unnecessary,  as  it  did  not  really  touch  the  vital  necessities  of  the 
examination.  I  read  a  great  deal  of  German  ;  all  Mummsen, 
a  great  deal  of  French,  and  all  Renan  ;  but  literary  French 
and  German  were  not  what  was  needed ;  long  lists  of  technical 
words  were  far  more  necessary.  The  cliches  of  political  leader- 
writers  ;  the  German  for  a  belligerent,  and  the  French  for  a 
Committee  on  Supply  ;  an  accurate  knowledge  of  where  the 
manufacturing  cities  of  England  were  situated,  and  the  solu- 
tion of  problems  about  one  tap  filling  a  bath  half  again  as  quickly 
as  another  emptied  it.  I  spent  a  great  deal  of  time,  but  not 
enough  as  it  turned  out,  making  lists  of  obscure  technical  words. 
I  learnt  the  Latin  for  prize-money,  which  I  was  told  was  a  useful 
word  for  "  prose,"  but  unfortunately  the  word  prize-money  did 
not  occur  in  the  Latin  translation  paper.  The  word  is  manubia 
I  am  glad  to  know  it.     It  is  indeed  unforgettable. 

We  were  examined  orally  in  French,  German,  and  in  Italian. 
When  I  was  confronted  with  the  German  examiner,  the  first 
thing  he  asked  me  was  whether  I  could  speak  German.  I  was 
foolishly  modest  and  answered  :  "  Ein  wenig  "  ("  A  little  "). 
"  Very  well,"  he  said,  "  it  will  be  for  another  time."  I  made 
up  my  mind  that  next  time  I  went  up  I  would  say  I  spoke  German 
as  well  as  Bismarck,  and  wrote  it  better  than  Goethe. 

I  kept  my  resolution  the  last  time  I  went  up  for  the  examina- 
tion, and  it  was  crowned  with  success. 

Here  is  one  of  the  arithmetic  questions  from  the  examina- 
tion paper  set  in  1894  : 

165 


166  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

"  What  vulgar  fraction  expresses  the  ratio  of  17 \  square 
yards  to  half  an  acre  ?  "     (I  am  told  this  is  an  easy  sum.) 

Here  is  a  sentence  which  had  to  be  translated  into  German 
as  it  was  dictated  in  English  : 

"  Factions  are  formed  upon  opinions  ;  which  factions  be- 
come in  effect  bodies  corporate  in  the  state  ; — nay,  factions 
generate  opinions  in  order  to  become  a  centre  of  union,  and  to 
furnish  watchwords  to  parties  ;  and  this  may  make  it  expedient 
for  government  to  forbid  things  in  themselves  innocent  and 
neutral." 

Here  is  a  geography  question  of  the  kind  I  found  most 
baffling  : 

'  Make  a  sketch  of  the  country  between  the  Humber  and 
the  Mersey  on  the  south,  and  the  Firth  of  Forth  and  Clyde  on 
the  north." 

When  I  went  up  for  the  examination,  I  think  it  was  in 
January  1896,  I  failed  both  in  geography  and  arithmetic,  and  so 
had  to  begin  the  routine  of  cramming  all  over  again.  All  the 
next  year  I  rang  the  changes  again  on  Florence,  Hildesheim,  and 
Scoones.  When  the  examination  was  over,  I  went  abroad  with 
Claud  Russell,  and  we  went  to  Paris  and  Monte  Carlo.  Lord 
Dufferin  was  Ambassador  in  Paris,  and  we  dined  with  him  once 
or  twice. 

We  saw  Guitry  and  Jeanne  Granier  perform  Maurice 
Donnay's  exquisite  play,  Amants. 

At  Monte  Carlo  we  stayed  with  Sir  Edward  Mallet  in  his 
"Villa  White."  A  brother  of  Lord  Salisbury,  Lord  Sackville 
Cecil,  was  staying  there.  He  had  a  passion  for  mechanics ; 
we  had  only  to  say  that  the  sink  seemed  to  be  gurgling,  or 
the  window  rattling,  or  the  door  creaking,  and  in  a  moment 
he  would  have  his  coat  off,  and,  screwdriver  in  hand,  would  set 
to  work  plumbing,  glazing,  or  joining. 

One  night  after  dinner,  just  to  see  what  would  happen,  I  said 
the  pedal  of  the  pianoforte  seemed  to  wheeze.  In  a  second  he 
was  under  the  pianoforte  and  soon  had  it  in  pieces.  He  found 
many  things  radically  wrong,  and  he  was  grateful  to  me  for 
having  given  him  the  opportunity  of  setting  them  right.  Sir 
Edward  Mallet  had  retired  from  the  Diplomatic  Service.  The 
house  where  we  stayed,  and  which  he  had  designed  himself, 
was  a  curious  example  of  design  and  decoration.  It  was  de- 
signed in  the  German  Rococo  style,  and  in  the  large  hall  stucco 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  167 

pillars  had  for  capitals,  florid,  gilded,  coloured,  and  luxuriant 
moulded  festoons  which  represented  flames,  and  soared  into 
the  ceiling. 

One  afternoon  Lord  Sackville  Cecil  said  he  wanted  to  see 
the  gambling-rooms.  We  went  for  a  walk,  and  on  our  way 
back  stopped  at  the  rooms.  Lord  Sackville  Cecil  was  not  an 
elegant  dresser ;  his  enormous  boots  after  our  walk  were  covered 
with  dust,  and  his  appearance  was  so  untidy  that  the  attendant 
refused  to  let  him  in.  I  suggested  his  showing  a  card,  but  his 
spirit  rebelled  at  such  a  climb-down,  and  we  went  home  without 
seeing  the  rooms. 

From  Monte  Carlo  I  went  to  Florence.  I  went  back  to  my 
pension  but  also  stayed  for  over  a  week  with  Vernon  Lee  at  her 
villa.  Her  brother,  Eugene  Lee-Hamilton,  who  had  been  on 
his  back  a  helpless  invalid  for  over  twenty  years,  had  suddenly, 
in  a  marvellous  manner,  recovered,  and  his  first  act  had  been 
to  climb  up  Mount  Vesuvius. 

I  recollect  the  great  beauty  and  the  heat  of  that  month  of 
March  at  Florence.  Giotto's  Tower,  and  the  graceful  dome  of 
the  Cathedral,  seen  from  the  plain  at  the  foot  of  San  Gervasio, 
looked  more  like  flowers  than  like  buildings  in  the  March 
evenings,  across  vistas  of  early  green  foliage  and  the  delicate 
pageant  of  blossom. 

We  went  for  many  delightful  expeditions  :  to  a  farmhouse 
that  had  belonged  to  Michael  Angelo  at  Carregi ;  to  the  Villa 
Gamberaia  with  its  long  grass  terrace  and  its  tall  cypresses — 
a  place  that  belongs  to  a  fairy-tale ;  and  I  remember  more 
vividly  than  all  a  wine-press  in  a  village  with  wine-stained  vats, 
large  barrels,  and  a  litter  of  farm  instruments  under  the  sun- 
baked walls — a  place  that  at  once  conjured  up  visions  of  southern 
ripeness  and  mellowness.  It  seemed  to  embody  the  dreams 
of  Keats  and  Chequer,  and  took  me  once  more  to  the  imaginary 
Italy  which  I  had  built  when  I  read  in  the  Lays  of  Ancient 
Romeoi  "  the  vats  of  Luna  "and  "  the  harvests  of  Arretium." 

Then  came  a  summer  term  at  Scoones,  distracted  and 
dislocated  by  many  amusements.  I  went  to  the  Derby  that 
year  and  backed  Persimmon  ;  to  the  first  performance  of 
Mrs.  Campbell's  Magda  the  same  night  ;  I  saw  Dose  at  Drury 
Lane  and  Sarah  Bernhardt  at  Daly's  ;  I  went  to  Ascot  ;  I 
went  to  balls;  I  stayed  at  Panshanger ;  and  at  Wrest,  at 
the  end  of  the  summer,  where  a  constellation  of  beauty  moved 


i6S  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

in  muslin  and  straw  hats  and  yellow  roses  on  the  lawns  of 
gardens  designed  by  Lenotre,  delicious  with  ripe  peaches  on  old 
brick  walls,  with  the  smell  of  verbena,  and  sweet  geranium ; 
and  stately  with  large  avenues,  artificial  lakes  and  white 
temples  ;  and  we  bicycled  in  the  warm  night  past  ghostly 
cornfields  by  the  light  of  a  large  full  moon. 

In  August  I  went  back  to  Germany,  and  heard  the  Ring 
at  Bayreuth.  Mottl  conducted.  But  of  all  that  sound  and 
fury,  the  only  thing  that  remains  in  my  mind  is  a  French  lady 
who  sat  next  to  me,  and  who,  when  Siegfried's  body  was  carried 
by  to  the  strains  of  the  tremendous  funeral  march,  burst  into 
sobs,  and  said  to  me  :  "  Moi  aussi  j'ai  un  fils,  Monsieur."  Then 
in  London  I  made  a  terrific  spurt,  and  worked  all  day  and  far 
into  the  night  to  make  ready  for  another  examination  which 
took  place  on  November  14.  I  remember  nothing  of  this 
long  nightmare.  As  soon  as  the  examination  was  over,  I 
started  with  Claud  Russell  for  Egypt.  We  went  by  train  to 
Marseilles,  and  then  embarked  in  a  Messagerie  steamer.  I 
spent  the  time  reading  Tolstoy's  War  and  Peace  for  the  first 
time.  The  passengers  were  nearly  all  French,  and  treated  us 
with  some  disdain ;  but  Fate  avenged  us,  for  when  we  arrived 
at  Alexandria,  we  were,  in  obedience  to  the  orders  of  my  uncle 
(Lord  Cromer),  allowed  to  proceed  at  once,  while  the  rest  of  the 
passengers  had  to  wait  in  quarantine.  We  went  to  Cairo, 
and  stayed  at  the  Agency  with  my  uncle.  The  day  we  arrived 
it  was  pouring  with  rain  which,  we  were  told,  was  a  rare  occur- 
rence in  Cairo. 

We  used  to  have  breakfast  on  a  high  verandah  outside  our 
bedrooms,  off  tiny  little  eggs  and  equally  small  fresh  bananas. 

At  luncheon  the  whole  of  the  diplomatic  staff  used  to  be 
present,  and  usually  guests  as  well.  The  news  came  to  Cairo 
that  I  had  failed  to  pass  the  examination,  in  geography  and 
arithmetic.  Claud  Russell,  I  think,  qualified,  and  was  given 
a  vacancy  later. 

In  the  evening  my  uncle  used  sometimes  to  read  us  passages 
of  abuse  about  himself  in  the  local  press.  One  phrase  which 
described  him  as  combining  the  oiliness  of  a  Chadband  with 
the  malignity  of  a  fiend  delighted  him.  He  gave  us  the  MSS. 
of  his  book,  Modern  Egypt,  which  was  then  only  partly  written, 
to  read.  He  was  never  tired  of  discussing  books  :  the  Classics, 
French  novels,  the  English  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century. 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  169 

He  could  not  endure  the  verse  of  Robert  Browning.  His 
admiration  for  French  prose  was  unbounded  and  for  the  French 
gift  of  expression  in  general,  their  newspaper  articles,  their 
speeches,  and,  above  all,  their  acting. 

Sometimes  we  rode  to  the  Pyramids,  and  one  day  we  had 
tea  with  Wilfrid  and  Lady  Anne  Blunt  in  their  Arab  house. 

We  did  not  stay  long  in  Cairo  ;  we  went  up  the  Nile.  The 
first  part  of  the  journey,  to  a  station  whose  name  I  forget,  was 
by  train  ;  and  once,  when  the  train  stopped  in  the  desert,  the 
engine-driver  brought  Claud  Russell  a  copybook  and  asked  him 
to  correct  an  English  exercise  he  had  just  done.  Claud  said 
how  odd  we  should  think  it  if  in  England  the  engine-driver 
brought  us  an  exercise  to  correct. 

Then  we  embarked  in  the  M.S.  Cleopatra  and  steamed  to 
Luxor,  where  we  saw  the  sights  :  the  tombs  of  the  kings,  the 
temple  of  Carnac,  the  statue  of  Memnon.  We  bathed  in  the 
Nile,  and  smoked  hashish. 

We  were  back  in  Europe  by  Christmas,  and  spent  Christmas 
night  in  the  waiting-room  of  Turin  railway  Nation  playing  chess  ; 
and  when  we  arrived  in  London  the  momentous  question  arose, 
what  was  I  to  do  to  pass  the  examination  ?  \\  e  were  only 
allowed  three  tries,  and  my  next  attempt  would  be  my  last  chance. 

The  large  staff  of  teachers  who  were  cramming  me  were  in 
despair.     I  was  told  I  must  pass  the  next  time. 

The  trouble  was  that  the  standard  of  arithmetic  demanded 
by  this  examination  was  an  elementary  standard,  and  I  had  now 
twice  attained  by  cramming  a  pitch  I  knew  I  should  never 
surpass.  At  Scoones'  they  said  my  only  chance  lay  in  getting 
an  easy  paper.  It  was  said  that  my  work  had  been  wrong  not 
in  degree  but  in  kind.  I  had  merely  wasted  time  by  reading 
Renan  and  Moinmsen;  other  candidates,  who  had  never  read 
a  German  book  in  their  lives,  by  learning  lists  of  words  got 
more  marks  than  I  did.  Herr  Dittel,  who  gave  me  private 
lessons  in  German,  said  that  he  could  have  sent  a  German  essay 
of  mine  to  a  German  magazine.  But  not  knowing  the  German 
for  "  belligerent,"  I  was  beaten  by  others  who  knew  the  language 
less  well.  The  same  applied  to  the  French  in  which  I  was  only 
second,  although  perhaps  in  some  ways  the  best  French  scholar 
among  the  candidates. 

It  seemed  useless  for  me  to  go  back  to  Scoones'  and  useless 
to  go  abroad.     After  much  debate  and  discussion  the  matter 


170  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

was  settled  by  chance.  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Auberon 
Herbert  in  the  winter,  and  instead  of  going  to  a  crammer's  I 
settled  to  go  and  live  at  Oxford,  and  I  took  rooms  at  King 
Edward  Street  and  went  to  coaches  in  Latin  and  arithmetic. 
For  two  terms  I  lived  exactly  as  an  undergraduate,  and  there 
was  no  difference  between  my  life  and  that  of  a  member  of 
Balliol  except  that  I  was  not  subject  to  College  authority. 

Then  began  an  interlude  of  perfect  happiness.  I  did  a 
little  work  but  felt  no  need  of  doing  any  more,  as,  if  anything, 
I  had  been  overcrammed  and  was  simply  in  need  of  digestion. 
I  rediscovered  English  literature  with  Bron,  and  shared  in  his 
College  life  and  in  the  lives  of  others.  Life  was  a  long  series 
of  small  dramas.  One  night  Bron  pulled  the  master's  bath- 
chair  round  the  Quad,  and  the  matter  was  taken  with  the 
utmost  seriousness  by  the  College  authorities.  A  College  meeting 
was  held,  and  Bron  was  nearly  sent  down.  Old  Balliol  men 
would  come  from  London  and  stay  the  night :  Claud  Russell 
and  Antony  Henley.  Arnold  Ward  was  engrossed  in  Tur- 
genev ;  Cubby  Medd, — or  was  that  later  ? — who  gave  promise 
of  great  brilliance,  was  spellbound  by  Rossetti.  And  then 
there  were  the  long,  the  endlessly  long,  serious  conversations 
about  the  events  of  the  College  life  and  athletics  and  the 
Toggers  and  the  Anna  and  the  Devor.  It  was  like  being  at 
Eton  again.  Indeed,  I  never  could  see  any  difference  between 
Eton  and  Balliol.  Balliol  seemed  to  me  an  older  edition  of 
Eton,  whereas  Cambridge  was  to  me  a  slightly  different  world, 
different  in  kind,  although  in  many  ways  like  Oxford ;  and, 
although  neither  of  them  know  it,  and  each  would  deny  it 
vehemently,  they  are  startlingly  like  each  other  all  the  same. 

I  knew  undergraduates  at  other  Colleges  as  well  as  at 
Balliol  and  a  certain  number  of  the  Dons  as  well. 

I  also  knew  a  good  many  of  the  old  Balliol  men  who  used  to 
come  down  to  Oxford  and  sometimes  stay  in  King  Edward  Street. 

Then  came  the  summer  term.  We  had  a  punt,  and  Bron 
Herbert,  myself,  and  others  would  go  out  in  it  and  read  aloud 
Wells'  Plattner  Story  and  sometimes  Alice  in  Wonderland,  and 
sometimes  from  a  volume  of  Swinburne  bound  in  green  shagreen 
— an  American  edition  which  contained  "  Atalanta  in  Calydon  " 
and  the  "Poems  and  Ballads."  That  summer  I  made  friends 
with  Hilary  Belloc,  who  lived  at  Oxford  in  Holywell  and  was 
coaching  young  pupils. 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  171 

I  had  met  him  once  before  with  Basil  Blackwood,  but  all  he 
had  said  to  me  was  that  I  would  most  certainly  go  to  hell,  and 
so  I  had  not  thought  it  likely  that  we  should  ever  make  friends, 
although  I  recognised  the  first  moment  I  saw  him  that  he  was 
a  remarkable  man. 

He  had  a  charming  little  house  in  Holywell,  and  there  he 
and  Antony  Henley  used  to  discuss  all  manner  of  things. 

I  had  written  by  now  a  number  of  Sonnets,  and  Belloc 
approved  of  them.  One  of  them  he  copied  out  and  hung  up 
in  his  room  on  the  back  of  a  picture.  I  showed  him  too  the 
draft  of  some  parodies  written  in  French  of  some  French  authors. 
He  approved  of  these  also,  and  used  to  translate  them  to  his 
pupils,  and  make  them  translate  them  back  into  French. 

Belloc  was  writing  a  book  about  Danton,  and  from  time 
to  time  he  would  make  up  rhymes  which  afterwards  became 
the  Bad  Child's  Book  of  Beasts.  The  year  before  I  went  to 
Oxford  he  had  published  a  small  book  of  verse  on  hard  paper 
called  Verses  and  Sonnets,  which  contained  among  several 
beautiful  poems  a  poem  called  "  Auvergnat."  I  do  not  think 
that  this  book  excited  a  ripple  of  attention  at  the  time,  and 
yet  some  of  the  poems  in  it  have  lived,  and  are  now  found  in 
many  anthologies,  whereas  the  verse  which  at  this  time  was 
received  with  a  clamour  of  applause  is  nearly  all  of  it  not  only 
dead  but  buried  and  completely  forgotten. 

We  had  wonderful  supper-parties  in  King  Edward  Street. 
Donald  Tovey,  who  was  then  musical  scholar  at  Balliol,  used  to 
come  and  play  a  Wagnerian  setting  to  a  story  he  had  found  in 
Punch  called  the  'Hornets,"  and  sometimes  the  Waldstein 
Sonata.  He  discussed  music  boldly  with  Fletcher,  the  Rowing 
Blue.  Belloc  discoursed  of  the  Jewish  Peril,  the  Catholic 
Church,  the  "Chanson  de  Roland,"  Ronsard,  and  the  Pyrenees 
with  indescribable  gusto  and  vehemence. 

People  would  come  in  through  the  window,  and  syphons 
would  sometimes  be  hurled  across  the  room  ;  but  nobody  ua> 
ever  wounded.  The  ham  would  be  slapped  and  butter  thrown 
to  the  ceiling,  where  it  stuck.  Piles  of  chairs  would  be  placed 
in  a  pinnacle,  one  on  the  top  of  the  other,  over  Arthur  Stanley, 
and  someone  would  climb  to  the  top  of  this  airy  Babel  and  drop 
ink  down  on  him  through  the  seats  of  the  chairs.  Songs  were 
sung;  port  was  drunk  and  thrown  about  the  room.  Iiul«  ■  >  I 
we  had  a  special  brand  of  port,  which  was  called  throwing  port, 


172  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

for  the  purpose.  And  then  again  the  evenings  would  finish  in 
long  talks,  the  endless  serious  talks  of  youth,  ranging  over  every 
topic  from  Transubstantiation  to  Toggers,  and  from  the  last 
row  with  the  Junior  Dean  to  Predestination  and  Free-will. 
We  were  all  discovering  things  for  each  other  and  opening  for 
each  other  unguessed-of  doors. 

Donald  Tovey  used  to  explain  to  us  how  bad,  musically, 
Hymns  Ancient  and  Modem  were,  and  tried  (and  failed)  to  explain 
me  the  Chinese  scale;  Belloc  would  quote  the  "Chanson  de 
Roland  "  and,  when  shown  some  piece  of  verse  in  French  or 
English  that  he  liked,  would  say  :  "  Why  have  I  not  known  that 
before  ?  "  or  murmur  :  "  Good  verse.  Good  verse."  Antony 
Henley  used  to  quote  Shakespeare's  lines  from  Henry  V.  : 

"  We  would  not  die  in  that  man's  company 
Who  fears  his  fellowship  to  die  with  us," 

as  the  most  satisfying  lines  in  the  language.  And  I  would 
punctuate  the  long  discussions  by  playing  over  and  over  again 
at  the  pianoforte  a  German  students'  song  : 

"  Es  hatten  drei  Gesellen  ein  fein  Collegium," 

and  sometimes  translate  Heine's  songs  to  Belloc. 

Best  of  all  were  the  long  summer  afternoons  and  evenings 
on  the  river,  when  the  punt  drifted  in  tangled  backwaters,  and 
improvised  bathes  and  unexpected  dives  took  place,  and  a  hazy 
film  of  inconsequent  conversation  and  idle  argument  was  spun 
by  the  half -sleeping  inmates  of  the  wandering,  lazy  punt. 

During  the  Easter  holidays  I  went  back  to  Hildesheim  for 
the  last  time  as  a  pupil.  Sometimes  when  I  was  supposed  to 
be  working,  Frau  Timme  would  find  me  engaged  in  a  literary 
pursuit,  and  she  would  say  :  "  Ach,  Herr  Baring,  lassen  Sie  diese 
Schriftstellerei  und  machen  Sie  Ihr  Examen  "  ("  Leave  all  that 
writing  business  and  pass  your  examination  "). 

Before  saying  a  final  good-bye  to  Hildesheim,  I  will  try  to 
sum  up  what  chiefly  struck  me  in  the  five  years  during  which 
I  visited  Germany  constantly.  Nearly  all  the  Germans  I 
met,  with  few  exceptions,  belonged  to  the  bourgeois,  the  pro- 
fessional class,  the  intelligentsia ;  and  they  used  to  speak  their 
mind  on  politics  in  general  and  on  English  politics  in  particular 
with  frankness  and  freedom. 

I  believe  that  during  all  this  period  our  relations  with  Ger- 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  173 

many  were  supposed  to  be  good.  Lord  Salisbury  was  directing 
the  foreign  policy  of  England,  and  his  object  was  to  maintain 
the  balance  of  power  in  Europe :  friendly  relations  with  both 
Germany  and  France,  without  entangling  England  in  any 
foreign  complications. 

The  English  then,  as  Bismarck  said,  were  bad  Europeans 
It  would  have  perhaps  been  better  for  England  if  it  had  been 
possible  for  them  to  continue  to  be  so. 

But  the  Germans  I  saw  never  thought  that  the  relations 
between  the  two  countries  were  satisfactory,  and  they  laid 
the  whole  blame  on  England.  I  never  once  met  a  German 
who  said  it  would  be  a  good  thing  for  Germany  and  England 
to  be  friends,  with  the  exception  of  Professor  Ihne.  But  I 
constantly  met  Germans  who  said  Germany  might  be  friends 
with  England  but  England  made  it  impossible.  England,  they 
said,  was  the  spoil-sport  of  Germany.  I  was  at  Hildeshcim 
when  the  cession  of  Heligoland  to  Germany  was  announced. 
"England,"  said  the  Germans,  "  ist  schr  schlau"  ("The 
English  are  very  sly").  They  thought  they  had  made  a  bad 
bargain. 

So  even,  when  they  had  gained  an  advantage,  it  escaped  their 
notice ;  and  they  always  thought  they  had  been  cheated  and 
bamboozled.  What  opened  my  eyes  more  clearly  still  was  the 
instruction  given  to  the  schoolboys  ;  the  history  lessons  during 
which  no  opportunity  was  ever  lost  of  belittling  England, 
and  above  all  the  history  books,  the  Weltgcschichten  (World- 
histories),  which  the  boys  used  to  read  for  pleasure. 

In  these  histories  of  the  world,  the  part  that  England  played 
in  mundane  affairs  was  made  to  appear  either  insignificant, 
baleful,  or  mean.  England  was  hardly  mentioned  during  the 
earlier  periods  <>f  history.  There  was  hardly  anything  about 
the  England  of  the  Tudors,  or  the  Stuarts,  but  England's  role 
in  the  Napoleonic  Wars,  in  which  England  was  the  ally  <>f  <  ! 
many,  was  made  to  appear  that  of  a  dishonesl  ln<>k<'r,  a  c\v\<  1 
monkey  making  the  foolish  cats  pull  the  chestnuts  out  of  the 
fire.  The  whole  of  England's  success  was  attributed  to  money 
and  money-making.  "  Sie  haben,"  the  Timmes  used  con- 
stantly to  say,  "den  grossen  Geldbeutd"  ("You  have  the 
large  purse  ").  It  was  not  only  the  Timmos  who  used  to  rub 
this  in,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  but  casual  strangers  one 
met  in  the  train  or  drinking  beer  at  a  restaurant. 


174  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

My  impression  was  that  Germans  of  this  class  detested 
England  as  a  nation,  in  a  manner  which  Englishmen  did  not 
suspect. 

"  Die  Engldnder  sind  nicht  mutig  aber  prahlen  konncn  Sie  " 
("  The  English  are  not  brave,  but  they  know  how  to  boast  "), 
a  boy  once  said  to  me. 

They  constantly  used  to  lay  down  the  law  about  English 
matters  and  conditions  of  life  in  England  which  they  knew 
nothing  of  at  all.  In  England,  they  used  to  say,  people  do 
such  and  such  a  thing.  The  English  have  no  this  or  no  that. 
Above  all,  "  Kcin  Bier,"  and  when  I  said  there  was  such  a  thing 
as  beer  in  England,  they  used  to  answer:  "  Ach,  das  Pale-Ale, 
aber  kein  Bierkomment,"  which  was  indeed  true. 

During  the  time  I  spent  in  Hildesheim  you  could  have 
heard  every  single  grievance  that  was  used  as  propaganda  in 
neutral  countries  during  the  European  War,  and  when  I  was 
in  Italy  during  the  war,  Italians  expressed  opinions  to  me 
which  were  obviously  German  in  inspiration  and  were  echoes 
of  what  I  used  to  hear  in  Hildesheim. 

I  never  met  a  German  who  had  been  to  England,  but  they 
always  had  the  most  clearly  denned  and  positive  views  of 
every  branch  of  English  life.  When  I  was  at  school  at  Hilde- 
sheim, the  book  the  boys  used  to  read  to  teach  them  English 
was  a  book  about  social  conditions  and  domestic  life  in  England, 
described  by  a  German  who,  I  suppose,  had  been  to  England. 
He  had  a  singular  gift  for  misunderstanding  the  simplest  and 
most  ordinary  occurrences  and  phenomena  of  English  life  and 
the  English  character. 

I  suppose  it  would  be  true  to  say  that  the  English  did  not 
know  the  Germans  any  better  than  the  Germans  knew  them. 
English  statesmen,  with  one  exception,  certainly  knew  little 
of  Germany,  but  there  is  this  difference.  The  English  admitted 
their  ignorance,  their  indifference,  and  passed  on.  They  never 
theorised  about  the  Germans,  nor  dogmatised.  They  never 
said:  "There  is  no  cheese  in  Germany,"  or:  "The  Germans 
cannot  play  football."  They  did  not  know  whether  they  did 
or  not,  and  cared  still  less. 

During  the  Boer  War,  the  German  Press  voiced  with  virulence 
all  that  the  middle  class  in  Germany  had  thought  for  years, 
and  we  were  astonished  at  this  explosion  of  violence ;  but 
in  reality  this  was  no  new  phenomenon  ;    it  was  the  natural 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  175 

expression  of  feelings  that  had  existed  for  long  and  which 
now  found  a  favourable  outlet. 

Of  course,  in  the  upper  classes,  things,  for  all  I  know,  may 
have  been  quite  different.  I  know  that  there  were  influential 
Germans  who  always  wished  for  good  relations  between  the 
two  countries,  but  even  there  they  were  in  a  minority. 

I  left  Germany  grateful  for  many  things,  extremely  fond  of 
many  of  the  people  I  had  known,  but  convinced  that  there  was 
not  the  slightest  chance  of  popular  opinion  in  Germany  ever 
being  favourable  towards  England,  as  the  feeling  the  Germans 
harboured  was  one  of  envy — the  envy  a  clever  person  feels  for 
someone  he  knows  to  be  more  stupid  than  himself  yet  to  be 
far  more  successful,  and  who  succeeds  without  apparent  effort, 
where  he  has  laboriously  tried  and  failed. 

Bismarck  used  to  say  there  was  not  a  German  who  would 
not  be  proud  to  be  taken  for  an  Englishman,  and  when  Germans 
felt  this  to  be  true  it  only  made  them  the  more  angry. 

Years  later  I  heard  foreign  diplomatists  who  knew  Germany 
well  sometimes  say  that  the  English  alarm  and  suspicion  of 
German  hatred  of  England  was  baseless,  and  that  the  idea  that 
Germany  was  always  brooding  on  a  possible  war  with  England 
was  unfounded. 

When  asked  how  they  accounted  for  the  evidence  which 
daily  seemed  to  point  to  the  contrary,  they  would  say  they 
knew  some  German  politicians  intimately  who  desired  nothing 
so  much  as  good  relations  with  England.  This  was  no  doubt 
true,  but  in  speaking  like  this,  these  impartial  foreigners  were 
thinking  of  certain  highly  cultured,  liberal-minded  aristocrats. 
They  did  not  know  the  German  bourgeoisie.  Indeed  they 
often  said,  when  someone  alluded  to  the  violence  of  German 
newspapers:  "That's  the  Professors." 

It  was  the  Professors.  But  it  was  the  Professors  who  wrote 
the  history  books,  who  taught  the  children  and  the  schoolboys, 
lectured  to  the  students,  and  trained  the  minds  of  the  future 
politicians  and  soldiers  of  Germany. 

During  my  last  sojourn  at  Hildeshcim  I  went  to  stay  with 
Erich  Wippern,  who  was  learning  forestry  in  the  Harz  M<  >unt  ains. 
He  lived  in  a  little  wooden  house  in  the  forest.  The  house  was 
furnished  entirely  with  antlers,  and  from  morning  till  night,  he 
associated  with  trees  and  was  taught  all  about  them  by  an  old 
forester. 


176  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

I  never  went  back  to  Hildesheim  again  for  any  time, 
although  I  used  sometimes  to  stay  a  night  there  on  my 
way  to  or  from  Russia.  The  last  time  I  heard  of  the 
Timmes  was  just  before  the  outbreak  of  war,  when  I 
received  a  letter  from  Kurt  Timme,  whom  I  had  known 
twenty-two  years  before  as  a  little  boy,  telling  me  his 
father  was  dead,  and  inviting  me  to  attend  his  own  wed- 
ding. Kurt  was  an  officer,  now  a  lieutenant.  I  sent  him 
a  wedding  present.  Two  weeks  later  we  were  at  war  with 
Germany. 

At  the  end  of  the  summer  term,  Bron,  Kershaw,  and  myself 
gave  a  dinner-party  at  the  Mitre,  to  which  forty  guests  were 
invited.  Slap's  band  officiated.  The  banquet  took  place  in  a 
room  upstairs.     This  was  the  menu  : 

JUNE  16,  1897. 

Melon,    Two    Soups,    Salmon,    Whitebait,   Sweet- 
bread, Bits  of  Chicken,  Lamb,  Potatoes,  Asparagus, 
Duck,    Peas,    Salad,     Jelly,    Ice,    Strawberries, 
Round  Things. 

The  caterers  of  the  dinner  were  loth  to  print  such  a  menu. 

They  hankered  for  phrases  such  as  Puree  a  la  bonne  femme, 
and  Poulets  printaniers,  but  I  overruled  them.  Very  soon, 
during  dinner,  the  musical  instalments  were  smashed  to  bits, 
and  towards  the  end  of  the  meal  there  was  a  fine  ice-throwing 
competition.  After  dinner  the  guests  adjourned  to  Balliol 
Quadrangle. 

It  was  Jubilee  year — the  second  Jubilee.  Preparations 
were  being  made  in  London  for  the  procession  and  for  other 
festivities,  and  the  atmosphere  was  charged  with  triumph  and 
prosperity.  For  the  third  time  in  my  life  I  saw  Queen  Victoria 
drive  through  the  streets  of  London.  I  saw  the  procession  from 
Montagu  House  in  Whitehall.  This  was  the  most  imposing  of 
all  the  pageants,  and  the  most  striking  thing  about  it  was  perhaps 
the  crowd. 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  talk  about  the  Fancy  Dress  Ball 
at  Devonshire  House.  I  had  a  complicated  costume  for  it,  but 
none  of  my  family  went  to  it  as  our  Uncle  Johnny  died  just 
before  it  came  off.  We  went  to  see  some  of  the  people  in  their 
clothes  at  Lord  Cowper's  house  in  St.  James's  Square,  where  I 
remember  a  tall  and  blindingly  beautiful    Hebe,  a  dazzling 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  177 

Charlotte  Corday,  in  grey  and  vermilion,  a  lady  who  looked  as 
if  she  had  stepped  out  of  an  Italian  picture,  with  a  long,  faded 
Venetian  red  train  and  a  silver  hat  tapering  into  a  point,  and 
another  who  had  stepped  from  an  old  English  frame,  a  pale 
figure  in  faded  draperies  and  exquisite  lace,  with  a  cluster  of 
historic  and  curiously  set  jewels  in  her  hair,  and  arms  and 
shoulders  like  those  of  a  sculpture  of  the  finest  Greek  period. 

Later  on  in  the  summer,  my  father,  who  had  not  been 
well  for  some  time,  died,  and  we  said  good-bye  to  37  Charles 
Street,  and  to  Membland  after  the  funeral  was  over,  for  ever. 

I  went  to  a  crammer's  at  Bournemouth  and  spent  the 
whole  of  the  winter  in  London  being  intensively  crammed,  and 
all  through  the  Christmas  holidays.  In  the  spring  there  was 
a  further  examination. 

This  time  I  qualified  in  all  subjects,  and  I  was  given  half- 
marks  in  arithmetic.  The  gift  of  these  half-marks  must  have 
been  a  favour,  as,  comparing  my  answers  with  those  of  other 
candidates,  after  the  examination,  I  found  that  my  answers 
in  no  way  coincided  with  theirs. 

Years  later  I  met  a  M.  Roche,  who  had  been  the  French 
examiner.  He  told  me  that  I  was  not  going  to  be  let  through  ; 
(as  I  suspected,  I  had  not  passed  in  arithmetic),  but  that  he  had 
gone  to  the  Board  of  Examiners  and  had  told  them  the  French 
essay  I  had  written  might  have  been  written  by  a  Frenchman. 
When  the  result  of  the  examination  was  announced  I  was  not  in 
the  first  three,  but  when  the  first  vacancy  occurred  later,  I  was 
given  it,  and  on  20th  June  1898  I  received  a  letter  from  the 
Civil  Service  Commission  saying  that,  owing  to  an  additional 
vacancy  having  been  reported,  I  had  been  placed  in  the 
position  of  a  successful  candidate,  and  asking  me  to  furnish 
evidence  of  my  age. 

I  was  able  to  do  this,  and  was  admitted  into  the  Foreign 
Office  and  placed  in  the  African  Department. 

I  enjoyed  my  first  summer  at  the  Foreign  Office  before 
the  newness  of  the  work  and  surroundings  wore  off.  The 
African  Department  was  interesting.  It  has  since  been  takm 
over  by  the  Colonial  Office.  Officials  from  West  Africa 
would  drift  in  and  tell  us  interesting  things,  and  there  wa- 
in the  Department  a  senior  clerk  whose  devotion  to  office 
work  was  such  that  his  leave,  on  the  rare  occasions  he  took 
it,  used  to  consist  in  his  coming  down  to  the  office  at  eleven 
12 


178  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

in  the  morning  instead  of  at  ten.  At  the  end  of  the  summer  I 
was  moved  up  into  the  Commercial  Department,  which  was  a 
haven  of  rest  in  the  Foreign  Office,  as  no  registering  had  to  be 
done  there,  and  no  putting  away  of  papers ;  and  the  junior 
clerks  used  to  write  drafts  on  commercial  matters — tenders 
and  automatic  couplings.  In  the  other  departments  they  had 
to  serve  a  fifteen-year  apprenticeship  before  being  allowed  to 
write  a  draft. 

Suddenly,  in  that  autumn,  the  whole  life  of  the  Office  was 
made  exciting  by  the  Fashoda  crisis.  We  were  actually  on  the 
brink  of  a  European  war.  The  question  which  used  to  be  dis- 
cussed from  morning  till  night  in  the  Office  was  :  "  Will  Lord 
Salisbury  climb  down  ?  "  The  Office  thought  we  always  climbed 
down ;  that  Lord  Salisbury  was  the  King  of  Climbers-down. 
But  Lord  Salisbury  had  no  intention  of  climbing  down  this 
time,  and  did  not  do  so.  I  remember  my  Uncle  Cromer  saying 
one  day,  when  someone  attacked  what  he  called  Lord  Salis- 
bury's vacillating  and  weak  policy :  "  Lord  Salisbury  knows  his 
Europe  ;  he  has  an  eye  on  what  is  going  on  in  all  the  countries 
and  on  our  interests  all  over  the  world,  and  not  only  on  one 
small  part  of  the  world."  During  this  crisis,  the  tension 
between  France  and  England  was  extreme  ;  it  was  made  worse 
by  the  inflammatory  speeches  that  irresponsible  members  of 
Parliament  made  all  over  England  at  the  time.  I  believe 
they  shared  the  Foreign  Office  view  that  Lord  Salisbury  would 
climb  down  at  the  end,  and  were  trying  to  burn  his  boats  for 
him  ;  but  they  need  not  have  troubled,  and  their  speeches  did 
far  more  harm  than  good.  They  had  no  effect  on  the  policy 
of  the  Foreign  Office,  which  was  clearly  settled  in  Lord 
Salisbury's  mind ;  all  they  did  was  to  exasperate  the  French, 
and  to  make  matters  more  difficult  for  the  Government. 
This  was  the  first  experience  of  what  seems  to  me  to  recur 
whenever  England  is  in  difficulties.  Directly  a  crisis  arises 
in  which  England  is  involved,  dozens  of  irresponsible  people, 
and  sometimes  even  responsible  people,  set  about  to  make 
matters  far  more  difficult  than  they  need  be.  This  was  especi- 
ally true  during  the  European  War.  I  never  saw  Lord  Salis- 
bury in  person  during  the  time  I  spent  in  the  Foreign  Office, 
except  at  a  garden-party  at  Hatfield,  where  I  was  one  of  several 
hundreds  whom  he  shook  hands  with.  But  I  had  often  the 
opportunity  of  reading  his  minutes,  and  sometimes  his  reports, 


OXFORD  AND  GERMANY  179 

written  in  his  own  handwriting,  of  conversations  he  had  held 
with  Foreign  Ambassadors.  These  were  always  amusing  and 
caustic,  and  his  comments  were  wise  and  far  sighted. 

The  internal  arrangements  and  organisation  of  the  Office 
were  in  the  hands  of  Lord  Sanderson.  Many  of  the  clerks 
lived  in  terror  of  him.  He  was  extremely  kind  to  me,  although 
he  always  told  me  I  should  never  be  a  good  1 1.  ik  and  would 
do  better  to  stick  to  diplomacy.  Even  on  the  printed  forms 
we  used  to  fill  up,  enclosing  communications,  which  we  called 
P.L.'s,  and  which  he  used  to  sign  himself,  in  person,  every 
evening,  a  clerk  standing  beside  him  with  a  slip  of  blotting-paper, 
his  minute  eye  for  detail  used  constantly  to  discern  a  slight 
inaccuracy,  either  in  the  mode  of  address  or  the  terminology. 
He  would  then  take  a  scraper  and  scratch  it  out  and  amend  it. 
The  signing  of  all  these  forms  must  have  used  a  great  deal  of 
his  time,  and  I  believe  the  custom  has  now  been  abolished. 

In  those  days  all  dispatches  were  kept  folded  in  the  Office, 
an  immensely  inconvenient  practice.  All  the  other  public 
offices  kept  them  flat,  but  when  it  was  suggested  that  the 
Foreign  Office  papers  should  be  kept  flat,  there  was  a  storm  of 
opposition.  They  had  been  kept  folded  for  a  hundred  years  ; 
the  change  was  unthinkable.  Someone  suggested  a  compromise  : 
that  they  should  be  half-folded  and  kept  curved,  but  this  was 
abandoned.  Ultimately,  I  believe,  they  were  allowed  to  be 
kept  flat. 

Later  on,  the  whole  work  of  the  Foreign  Office  was  re- 
formed, and  the  clerks  no  longer  have  to  spend  half  the  day 
in  doing  manual  clerical  work.  In  my  time  it  was  most  ex- 
hausting, except  in  the  Commercial  Department,  which  was 
a  haven  of  gentlemanlike  ease.  Telegrams  had  often  to  be 
ciphered  and  deciphered  by  the  clerk,  but  not  often  in  the 
Commercial  Department.  But  on  one  Saturday  afternoon 
I  remember  having  to  send  off  two  telegrams,  one  to  Sweden 
and  one  to  Constantinople,  and  I  sent  the  Swedish  telegram 
to  Constantinople  and  the  Turkish  telegram  to  Sweden,  and 
nothing  could  be  done  to  remedy  the  mistake  till  Monday,  as 
nobody  noticed  it  till  it  was  too  late,  and  the  clerks  went  away 
on  Saturday  afternoon.  Sending  off  the  bags  was  always  a 
moment  of  fuss,  anxiety,  and  strain.  Someone  nearly  always 
out  of  excitement  used  to  drop  the  sealing-wax  on  the  hand 
of  the  clerk  who  was  holding  the  bag,  and  sometimes  the  bag 


180  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

used  to  be  sent  to  the  wrong  place.  One  day  both  Lord  Sander- 
son and  Sir  Frank  Bertie  came  into  one  of  the  departments 
to  make  sure  the  bag  should  go  to  the  right  place.  The 
excess  of  cooks  had  a  fatal  result  on  the  broth,  and  the  bag, 
which  was  destined  for  some  not  remote  spot,  was  sent  to 
Guatemala  by  mistake,  whence  it  could  not  be  retrieved  for 
several  months. 

After  Christmas  that  year  I  stayed  with  the  Cornishes  at  the 
Cloisters  at  Eton,  and  we  acted  a  play  called  Sylvie  and  Bruno, 
adapted  from  Lewis  Carroll's  book.  The  Cornish  children  and 
the  Ritchies  took  part  in  it.  I  played  the  part  of  the  Other 
Professor,  and  one  act  was  taken  up  by  his  giving  a  lecture. 
The  play  was  successful,  and  Donald  Tovey  wrote  some  music 
for  it  and  accompanied  the  singers  at  the  pianoforte. 

In  January  I  was  appointed  attache  to  the  Embassy  at 
Paris,  and  I  began  my  career  as  a  diplomat. 


CHAPTER    X 
PARIS 

I  HAD  rooms  at  the  Embassy,  a  bedroom  above  the 
Chancery,  and  a  little  sitting-room  on  the  same  floor 
as  the  Chancery.  The  Ambassador  was  Sir  Edmund 
Monson  ;  the  Councillor,  Michael  Herbert  ;  the  head  of  the 
Chancery,  Reggie  Lister.  Both  of  these  had  rooms  to  them- 
selves where  they  worked.  The  other  secretaries  worked  in 
the  Chancery. 

In  the  morning,  the  bag  used  to  arrive  from  the  Foreign 
Office.  It  used  to  be  fetched  from  Calais  every  night,  and  twice 
a  week  a  King's  Messenger  would  bring  it.  The  business  of 
the  day  began  by  the  bag  being  opened,  and  the  contents  were 
entered  in  a  register  and  then  sent  to  the  Ambassador.  The 
dispatches  were  then  sent  back  to  the  Chancery  in  red 
boxes  to  be  dealt  with,  and  were  finally  folded  up  and  put 
awav  in  a  cupboard.  Later  on  in  the  day,  a  box  used 
to  come  down  from  the  Ambassador  with  draft  dispatches, 
which  were  written  out  by  us  on  typewriters,  if  we  could,  or 
with  a  pen. 

Work  at  the  Embassy  meant  writing  out  dispatches  on  a 
typewriter,  registering  dispatches  and  putting  them  away,  or 
ciphering  and  deciphering  telegrams.  That  was  the  important 
part  of  the  work.  It  was  for  that  one  had  to  hang  about  in  case 
it  might  happen,  and  it  was  liable  to  happen  at  any  moment  of 
the  day,  or  the  night. 

Besides  this,  there  was  a  perpetual  stream  of  minor  occur- 
rences which  came  into  the  day's  work.  People  of  all  nation- 
alities used  to  call  at  the  Embassy  and  have  to  be  interviewed 
by  someone.  A  lady  would  arrive  and  say  she  would  like  t.> 
paint  a  miniature  of  Queen  Victoria  ;  a  soldier  would  arrive 
from  India  who  thought  he  had  been  bitten  by  a  mad  dog,  and 
ask  to  see  Pasteur  ;  a  man  would  call  who  was  the  only  legitimate 

iti 


iS2  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

King  of  France,  Henry  v.,  with  his  title  and  dynasty  printed 
on  his  visiting  card,  and  ask  for  the  intervention  of  the  British 
Government  ;  or  someone  would  come  to  say  that  he  had 
found  the  real  solution  of  the  Irish  problem,  or  the  Eastern 
question  ;  or  a  way  of  introducing  conscription  into  England 
without  incurring  any  expense  and  without  English  people 
being  aware  of  it.  Besides  this,  British  subjects  of  every  kind 
would  come  and  ask  for  facilities  to  see  Museums,  to  write 
books,  to  learn  how  to  cure  snake  bites,  to  paddle  in  canoes  on 
the  Oise  or  the  Loire,  to  take  their  pet  dogs  back  to  England 
without  muzzles  (this  was  always  refused),  or  to  take  a  book 
from  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale,  or  a  missal  from  some  remote 
Museum.  All  these  people  had  to  be  interviewed  and  their 
requests,  if  reasonable,  had  to  be  forwarded  to  the  French 
Government,  for  which  there  were  special  stereotyped  formulae. 
Drafts  had  to  be  written  for  notes  to  the  French  Govern- 
ment, and  there  was  a  large  correspondence  with  the  various 
Consulates. 

In  the  morning,  the  head  of  the  Chancery  used  to  interview 
the  Ambassador  and  report  to  the  Chancery  on  the  state  of  his 
temper  ;  sometimes  he  would  go  and  see  a  French  Minister 
and  come  back  laden  with  news  and  gossip  ;  various  secre- 
taries, the  naval  and  military  attaches,  or  the  King's  Messenger, 
would  stroll  into  the  Chancery,  and  discuss  the  latest  news, 
and  sometimes  other  visitors  from  England  would  waste  our 
time. 

The  Ambassador  never  appeared  in  person  in  the  Chancery, 
and  his  displeasure  with  the  staff,  when  it  was  incurred,  used 
to  be  conveyed  to  them  in  memoranda,  written  in  red  ink,  which 
were  sent  to  them  in  a  red  leather  dispatch  box. 

Sir  Edmund  Monson  had  the  pen  of  a  ready  dispatch- 
writer,  and  he  would  write  very  long  and  beautifully  expressed 
dispatches. 

We  used  to  have  luncheon  generally  at  the  same  restaurant, 
and  be  free  in  the  afternoons,  although  we  had  to  come  back 
towards  tea-time  to  see  if  there  was  anything  to  do  and  often 
remain  in  the  Chancery  till  nearly  eight  o'clock  ;  one  resident 
clerk  had  to  live  in  the  house  in  case  there  were  telegrams  at 
night.  If  there  was  a  lot  of  telegraphing,  the  work  would  be 
heavy. 

The  Chancery  hours  were  always  gay.     One  day  one  of  the 


PARIS  183 

third  secretaries  and  myself  had  an  argument,  and  I  threw  the 
contents  of  the  inkpot  at  him.  He  threw  the  contents  of 
another  inkpot  back  at  me.  The  interchange  of  ink  thi  n 
became  intensive,  and  went  as  far  as  red  ink.  All  the  inkpots 
of  the  Chancery  were  emptied,  and  the  other  secretaries  ducked 
their  heads  while  the  grenade-  of  ink  whizzed  past  their  head-. 
The  fight  went  on  till  all  the  ink  in  the  Chancery  was  used  up. 
My  sitting-room  was  then  drawn  on,  and  the  fight  went  on 
down  the  Chancery  stairs,  into  the  street,  and  I  had  a  final 
shot  from  my  sitting-room  window,  the  ink  pouring  down  the 
walls. 

We  were  drenched  with  ink,  red  and  black,  but  still  more 
so  was  the  Chancery  carpet,  the  staircase,  and  the  walls  of 
the  Rue  Faubourg  St.  Honore\  Reggie  Lister  was  told 
what  had  happened,  and  said :  "  Really,  those  boys  are  too 
tiresome." 

We  were  alarmed  at  the  state  of  the  carpet,  a  handsome  red 
densely  thick  pile.  We  bought  some  chemicals  from  the 
chemist  and  tried  to  wash  it  out,  spending  hours  in  the 
effort  after  dinner.  The  only  result  was  that  the  corrosive 
acids  burnt  the  carpet  away,  which  made  the  damage  much 
worse. 

The  next  morning  Herbert  arrived  at  the  Embassy  and 
noticed  that  the  Chancery  staircase  was  splashed  with  black 
stains.  He  asked  the  reason  and  was  told.  We  were  sent  for. 
In  quiet,  acid,  biting  tones  he  told  us  we  were  nothing  better 
than  dirty  little  schoolboys,  and  we  went  away  with  our  tails 
between  our  legs.  But  all  that  was  nothing  ;  Reggie's  plaintive 
remonstration  and  Herbert's  biting  censure  left  us  calm  ;  what 
we  were  really  frightened  of  was  the  Ambassador — would  he 
find  it  out  ? 

The  next  three  days  were  days  of  dark  apprehension,  over- 
clouded with  the  shadow  of  a  possible  ink-row  ;  especially  as 
the  stain  caused  by  the  adds  on  the  Chancery  carpel  had  turned 
it  grey  and  white,  and  left  a  dreadful  cavity  in  the  middle  of  the 
stain.  We  ordered  a  new  carpet  and  prayed  that  the  Am- 
bassador might  not  be  led  by  an  evil  mischance  to  visit  the 
Chancery.  He  did  not,  ami  the  episode  passed  off  unnoticed 
by  him. 

Our  relations  with  France  at  this  time  were  not  of  the  best. 
The  Fashoda  incident  was  just  over;  the  Boer  War  was  going 


184  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

on,  which  the  French  said  was :  "  Une  guerre  d'affaires  "  ;  a 
speech  had  been  made  recently  by  Sir  E.  Monson  at  the  banquet 
of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  which  had  made  a  great  sensa- 
tion. The  majority  of  the  French  Cabinet  were  in  favour  of 
asking  that  the  British  Government  be  asked  to  recall  Sir  E. 
Monson,  but  M.  Delcasse"  was  strongly  opposed  to  this  as  he 
feared  war.  In  spite  of  all  this,  the  French  were  friendly  to 
us  personally.  I  was  elected  to  the  "  Cercle  de  l'Union  "  and 
seconded  by  General  Galliffet. 

The  French  were  absorbed  in  the  Dreyfus  case.  Nothing 
else  was  discussed  from  morning  till  night.  Wherever  one 
went  one  heard  echoes  of  this  discussion,  and  in  whatever  circle 
or  group  you  heard  the  problem  discussed  the  disputants  were 
generally  divided  in  a  proportion  of  five  to  three  ;  three  be- 
lieving in  the  innocence  of  Dreyfus,  and  five  believing  in  his 
guilt. 

One  night  I  dined  with  Edouard  Rod  and  Brewster.  The 
burning  topic  engrossed  us  to  such  an  extent,  we  discussed  it  so 
long  and  so  keenly  that  I  still  remember  the  only  other  subjects 
we  mentioned  ;  they  stood  out,  isolated  and  rare,  like  oases 
in  the  vast  Dreyfus  desert.  I  remember  Rod  saying  he  didn't 
care  for  Verlaine's  poetry,  because  it  wasn't  banal  enough. 
Brewster  and  I  quoted  some  lines  ;  but  Rod  thought  them  all 
too  subtle  and  not  direct  enough.     Finally  I  quoted  : 

"  Triste,  triste  etait  mon  ame, 
A  cause,  a  cause  d'une  femme." 

This  he  passed. 

We  discussed  plays  for  a  brief  moment.  Rod  said  he 
liked  bad  plays  played  by  good  actors — for  instance,  Duse  in 
La  Dame  aux  Canielias  ;  Brewster  said  he  liked  good  plays 
done  by  bad  actors — Musset  played  by  refined  amateurs ;  I 
said  I  liked  good  plays  acted  by  good  actors.  Then  we  talked 
of  Dreyfus  once  more,  and  Rod  said  plaintively  :  "  De  quoi  est- 
ce-qu'on  parlera  lorsque  l'affaire  sera  finie  ?  " 

I  made  acquaintance  of  Anatole  France  and  attended  some 
of  his  Sunday  morning  levees  at  the  Villa  Said  in  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne. 

When  I  first  went  there,  I  never  heard  any  topic  except 
L'affaire  mentioned,  and  indeed  the  only  people  present  at 
these  meetings  were  fanatical  partisans  of  Dreyfus  who  did  not 


PARIS  185 

wish  to  talk  of  anything  else.  In  other  houses  I  met  equally 
fanatical  believers  in  Dreyfus'  guilt.  While  one  was  sitting 
at  a  quiet  tea,  an  excited  academician  would  rush  in  and  say : 
"  Savez-vous  ce  qu'ils  ont  fait  ?  Savez-vous  ce  qu'ils  osent 
dire  ?  "  I  find  this  entry  in  my  notebook  dated  5th  July  1899, 
from  Boswell  : 

"  Talking  of  a  court-martial  that  was  sitting  upon  a  very 
momentous  public  occasion,  he  (Dr.  Johnson)  expressed  much 
doubt  of  an  enlightened  decision  ;  and  said  that  perhaps  there 
was  not  a  member  of  it  who  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  had 
ever  spent  an  hour  by  himself  in  balancing  probabilit 

On  the  other  hand,  I  remember  someone  saying  at  the  time 
that  although  the  decisions  of  court-martials  were  nearly 
always  wrong,  technically,  in  their  form,  they  were  nearly 
always  right  in  substance. 

Most  English  people  whom  I  saw  during  this  period  believed 
in  Dreyfus'  innocence,  but  not  all.  Among  the  fervent  believers 
in  his  guilt  was  Arthur  Strong,  then  librarian  in  the  House  of 
Lords. 

I  had  made  Arthur  Strong's  acquaintance  at  Edmund 
Gosse's  house,  and  he  was  from  that  moment  kind  to  me. 
In  appearance  he  was  like  pictures  of  Erasmus  (not  that  I 
have  ever  seen  one  !) — the  perfect  incarnation  of  a  scholar.  He 
knew  and  understood  everything,  but  forgave  little.  And  the 
smoke  from  the  flame  of  his  learning  and  his  intellect  some- 
times got  into  people's  eyes.  I  frequently  saw  him  in  London, 
and  once  he  came  to  see  me  in  Paris.  I  remember  his  looking 
at  the  bookshelf  and  the  pictures  on  my  walls,  photographs  of 
pictures  by  Giorgione  and  Titian. 

He  approved  of  Dyce's  Shakespeare  ;  Dyce's,  he  said,  was 
a  good  edition.  He  disapproved  of  Stevenson  ;  Stevenson,  he 
said,  had  fancy  but  no  imagination.  Giorgione,  he  said,  was  to 
Titian  what  Marcello  was  to  Gluck.  Talking  of  the  Dreylu^ 
case,  he  said  if  English  people  would  only  understand  that  the 
Dreyfusards  are  the  same  as  pro-Boers  in  England  they  would 
talk  differently.  He  said  the  French  were  supreme  critics  of 
verse.  They  were  like  the  Persians,  they  stood  no  nonsense 
about  poetry.  To  them  it  was  either  good  or  bad  verse. 
He  used  to  say  that  there  had  never  been  since  Johnson's 
Lives  of  the  Poets  a  critical   review  of  English   literature   as 


i86  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

big  and  as  broad.  We  might  find  fault  with  some  of 
Dr.  Johnson's  judgments,  but  there  had  been  nothing  to 
replace  it. 

He  admired  Byron  as  much  as  my  father  did,  and  in  the 
same  way.  He  thought  him  a  towering  genius.  Shelley  like- 
wise, but  not  Wordsworth.  Wordsworth,  he  said,  was  like 
Taine  and  Wagner.  They  were  all  three  just  on  the  wrong 
lines,  each  one  of  them  on  a  tremendous  scale,  but  wrong 
nevertheless. 

We  used  to  have  fierce  arguments  about  Wagner.  Wagner's 
work,  he  used  to  say,  was  not  dramatic  but  scenic.  He  in- 
vented a  vastly  effective  situation  but  left  it  at  that  ;  neither 
the  action  nor  the  music  moved  on.  He  thought  Mozart  was 
infinitely  more  dramatic.  He  said  that  Wagner  could  not 
wiite  a  melody,  and  that  if  he  did,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Preislied  in  the  Meister singer,  it  was  commonplace  and  vulgar. 
The  ♦'  Leit-Motivs  "  were  not  complete  melodies. 

I  was  at  that  time  a  fervent  Wagnerite,  and  used  to  contest 
his  points  hotly.  Curiously  enough,  six  years  later,  his  ideas 
on  Wagner  found  an  echo  in  a  letter  which  I  received  from 
Vernon  Lee,  after  she  had  been  to  Bayreuth.  This  is  what 
she  wrote  : 

"  About  Bayreuth.  Although  I  expected  little  enjoyment, 
I  have  been  miserably  disappointed.  It  is  so  much  less  out 
of  the  common  than  I  expected.  Just  a  theatre  like  any  other, 
save  for  the  light  being  turned  out  entirely  instead  of  half-cock 
only,  and  the  only  beautiful  things  an  opera  ever  offers  to  the 
eye,  namely  the  fiddles,  great  and  small,  and  the  enchanting 
kettle-drums,  being  stuffed  out  of  sight.  The  mise  en  scene  is 
more  grotesquely  bad  than  almost  any  other  opera  get-up. 
What  is  insufferable  to  me  is  the  atrocious  way  in  which  Wagner 
takes  himself  seriously  :  the  self-complacent  (if  I  may  coin  an 
absurd  expression)  auto-religion  implied  in  his  hateful  unbridled 
long-windedness  and  reiteration  ;  the  element  of  degenerate 
priesthood  in  it  all,  like  English  people  contemplating  their 
hat  linings  in  Church,  their  prudery  about  the  name  of  God.  .  .  . 
Surely  all  great  art  of  every  sort  has  a  certain  coyness  which 
makes  it  give  itself  always  less  than  wanted  :  look  at  Mozart, 
he  will  give  you  a  whole  act  of  varying  dramatic  expression 
(think  of  the  first  act  of  Don  Giovanni)  of  deepest,  briefest 
pathos  and  swift  humour,  a  dozen  perfect  songs  or  concerted 
pieces,  in  the  time  it  takes  for  that  old  poseur,  Amfortas,  to 
squirm  over  his  Grail,  or  Kundry  to  break  the  ice  with  Parsifal. 


PARIS  187 

Even  Tristan,  so  incomparably  finer  than  Wagner's  other 
things,  is  indecent  through  it>  dragging  out  of  situations,  its 
bellowing  out  of  confessions  which  tin-  natural  human  being 

dreads  to  profane  by  showing  or  expressing.  With  all  this  goes 
what  to  me  is  the  chief  psychological  explanation  of  Wagner 

(and   of   his   hypnotic   power  over  SOUK  ms),   hi-,   extreme 

slowness  of  vital  tempo.  Listening  to  him  1--  like  finding  oneself 
in  a  planet  where  the  Time's  unit  is  bigger  than  oui    :  one  is  on 

the  stretch,  devitalised  as  by  the  contemplation  of  a  slug.  Do 
you  know  who  has  the  same  peculiarity  ?  D'Annun/.io.  And 
it  is  this  which  makes  his  literature,  like  Wagner's  music,  so 
undramatic,  so  sensual,  so  inhuman,  turn  everything  into  a 
process  of  gloating.  I  had  the  good  fortune  (like  Nietzsche)  of 
hearing  Carmen  ju  t  after  the  King.  The  humanity  of  it,  and 
the  modesty  also,  are  due  very  much  to  the  incomparable 
briskness  of  the  rhythm  and  phrasing  ;  the  mind  is  made  to 
work  quickly,  the  life  of  the  hearer  to  brace  itself  to  action." 

I  think  Arthur  Strong  would  have  agreed  with  every  word 
of  this. 

1  had  not  been  at  Paris  long  before  one  evening  after  dinner 
the  telephone  bell  rang  ;  I  went  to  answer  it  and  was  told  that 
President  Faure  was  dead.  The  staff  of  the  Embassy  walked 
in  the  funeral  procession  to  Notre  Dame,  in  uniform.  It  was 
a  radiant  day.  The  mourning  decorations — a  veil  of  crape  flung 
negligently  across  the  facade  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies — the 
banners,  the  wreaths,  the  draperies,  were  a  fine  example  of  the 
French  discretion  and  artistic  instinct  in  decoration.  On  the 
balcony  of  the  Thdatre  Sarah  Bernhardt,  Sarah  Bernhardt  was 
sitting  wrapped  in  furs  ;  with  us  were  the  Corps  Diplomatique, 
some  officials  from  the  French  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs  ;  one 
a  composer  of  dance  tunes,  Sourires  d'Avril,  etc.,  once  c<  le- 
brated  all  over  Europe,  now  more  forgotten  than  the  songs  of 
Nineveh  or  Tyre.  We  laughed,  we  chattered,  we  ate  ch<  colate, 
we  enjoyed  the  sunshine  and  the  exercise,  we  gave  no  thought 
to  the  man  in  t  lie  gorgeous  coffin  who  had  taken  so  much  trouble 
to  ape  and  observe  the  forms  of  majesty,  ami  who  had  been 
rewarded  with  such  merciless  ridicule. 

During  the  first  fortnight  I  spent  in  the  Diplomatic  Service 
there  was  a  plethora  of  funerals  which  we  had  to  attend  ;  one 
at  the  Greek  Church  ;  one  at  the  Madeleine.  Attending 
funerals,  and  going  to  the  station  to  meet  royalties  were  both 
important  factors  in  Diplomatic  life.     Indeed,  at  a  small  post 


188  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

one  seemed  to  spend  half  one's  life  at  the  railway  station.  Some 
of  the  secretaries  were  keen  race-goers,  and  when,  as  sometimes 
happened,  they  were  not  allowed  to  go  because  of  possible  work, 
and  they  would  point  out  that  there  was  not  likely  to  be  any 
work  to  do,  Reggie  Lister  used  wisely  to  remark  that  we  were 
not  paid  for  the  amount  of  work  we  did,  but  for  hanging  about 
in  case  there  should  be  any  work.  In  spite  of  this,  he  used 
generally  to  arrange  things  in  such  a  manner  that  anyone  who 
wanted  to  go  to  the  races  could  go. 

Reggie  Lister  was  an  artist  in  life  and  the  organisation  of 
life.  He  built  his  arrangements  and  those  of  others  with  a  light 
scaffolding  that  could  be  taken  down  at  a  moment's  notice  and 
rearranged  if  necessary  in  a  different  manner  to  suit  a  change  of 
circumstance.  He  was  radiantly  sensible.  He  had  a  horror 
of  the  trashy  and  the  affected,  and  his  gaiety  was  buoyant, 
boyish,  and  infectious.  If  he  was  really  amused  himself,  his 
face  used  to  crinkle  and  his  body  shake  like  a  jelly,  "  comme  un 
gros  bebe\"  as  a  Frenchman  once  said.  His  intuition  was  like 
second-sight  and  his  tact  always  at  work  but  never  obtrusive, 
like  the  works  of  a  delicate  watch.  I  never  saw  anyone  either 
before  or  after  who  could  make  such  a  difference  to  his  sur- 
roundings and  to  the  company  he  was  with.  He  made  every- 
thing effervesce.  You  could  not  say  how  he  did  it.  It  was  not 
because  of  any  exceptional  brilliance  or  any  unusual  wit,  or 
arresting  ideas ;  but  over  and  over  again  I  have  seen  him  do 
what  people  more  brilliant  than  himself  could  not  do  to  save 
their  lives,  that  is,  transfigure  a  dull  company  and  change  a 
grey  atmosphere  into  a  golden  one.  It  was  not  only  that 
he  could  never  bore  anyone  himself,  but  that  nobody  was  ever 
bored  when  he  was  there.  You  laughed  with  him,  not  at  him. 
He  took  his  enjoyment  with  him  wherever  he  went  and  he 
made  others  share  it. 

His  taste  was  fastidious,  but  catholic,  and  above  all 
things  sensible.  He  was  acutely  appreciative  of  external 
things  :  a  walk  down  the  Champs  Elysees  on  a  fine  spring  morn- 
ing ;  good  cooking  ;  dancing  and  skating,  and  he  danced 
like  mad  ;  he  was  never  tired  of  telling  one  of  his  summer 
travels  in  Greece  ;  his  first  disappointment  and  his  subsequent 
delight  in  Constantinople — and  nobody  in  the  world  could 
tell  such  things  as  well.  It  was  difficult  to  be  more  intelli- 
gent ;   but  his  intelligence  (and  after  a  minute's  conversation 


PARIS  c8g 

with  him  you  could  not  but  be  aware  of  its  acuteness),  his  love 
and  knowledge  of  artistic  things,  his  shrewdness,  his  humour, 
and  rollicking  fun,  although  taken  all  together,  are  still  not 
enough  to  account  for  the  fascination  that  his  personality 
exercised  over  so  many  different  people — over,  I  believe,  almost 
anyone  he  pleased,  if  he  took  the  trouble.  If  his  diplomatic 
duties  called  for  trouble  of  this  kind,  there  was  none  he  would 
not  take  ;  if  only  his  own  private  social  life  was  concerned  he 
sometimes  permitted  himself  the  luxury  of  indifference  ;  but 
he  never  indulged  in  "  le  plaisir  aristocratique  de  deplaire  "  ; 
although  the  company  of  celebrities  tried  him  almost  beyond 
endurance,  leaving  a  peevish  aftermath  for  his  friends  to  put 
up  with. 

One  instance  is  better  than  pages  of  explanation  and 
analysis. 

One  day  Reggie  Lister  and  myself  each  received  a  letter 
from  a  friend  in  England  asking  us  to  be  civil  to  a  young  French 
couple  who  were  newly  married,  and  were  just  setting  up  house 
in  Paris.  Reggie  left  cards  on  them,  and  they  asked  us  both  to 
luncheon. 

We  found  them  in  a  small  but  extremely  clean  apartment  on 
the  other  side  of  the  river,  and  as  we  went  into  the  drawing- 
room  it  seemed  to  be  crowded  with  relations  in  black — mothers- 
in-law  and  sisters-in-law,  and  aunts.  All  of  them  in  deep 
mourning.  It  reminded  me  of  the  opening  scene  of  a  one-act 
play,  which  used  to  be  popular  many  years  ago,  called  La  joic 
fait  peur.  In  that  play,  the  curtain  rises  on  a  bereaved  family 
who  are  all  of  them  steeped  in  inspissated  gloom. 

We  went  into  the  little  dining-room  and  sat  down  to  a 
shiny  mahogany  table.  An  old  servant  tottered  and  pottered 
about  the  room  with  a  bunch  of  keys  and  a  bottle  of  wine 
covered  with  cobwebs.  A  rather  grim  mother-in-law  sat  at 
the  head  of  the  table.  The  young,  newly  married  couple  were 
shy.  There  was  an  atmosphere  of  stern,  rigid  propriety  and 
inflexible  tradition  over  the  whole  proceeding.  Formal  phrases 
were  bandied,  and  all  the  time  the  mother-in-law,  the  aunts, 
and  the  sisters-in-law,  all  of  them  dressed  in  crape  with  neat 
white  frills,  never  ceased  to  throw  on  the  bashful  young 
couple  the  full  searchlight  of  their  critical  observation.  But 
we  had  not  been  at  the  table  many  minutes  before  Reggie  had 
captivated  the  company,  and  at  the  end  of  five  minutes  they 


190  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

were  all  screaming  with  laughter  and  talking  at  the  top  of  their 
voices.  They  were  not  laughing  at  him.  They  were  laughing 
with  him. 

This  is  just  what  Reggie  Lister  could  do,  and  what  I  have 
never  seen  anybody  else  succeed  in  doing,  to  that  extent  and  in 
such  difficult  circumstances.  He  had  something  which  made 
you,  whoever  was  in  the  room,  wish  to  listen  to  him,  and 
made  you  wish  him  to  listen  to  you.  He  had  also  the  gift 
of  making  the  witty  wittier,  the  singer,  the  talker,  the 
musician,  the  reciter,  do  better  than  his  best,  of  drawing 
out  the  best  of  other  people  by  his  instantly  responsive 
appreciation. 

The  French  of  all  classes  appreciated  and  loved  him,  and 
when  he  died  they  felt  as  if  an  essential  part  of  Paris  had  been 
taken  away,  and  a  part  that  nothing  could  replace.  To  be 
with  him  at  the  same  Embassy,  as  I  was  for  a  year  and  a  half, 
was  an  education  in  all  that  makes  life  worth  living.  But 
what  was  life  to  me  was,  I  am  afraid,  sometimes  death  to  him, 
as  I  tried  him  at  times  highly. 

The  Ambassador,  Sir  Edmund  Monson,  was  academic  with 
a  large  swaying  presence  and  an  inexhaustible  supply  of  polished 
periods.  A  fine  scholar  and  a  master  of  precise  and  well- 
expressed  English  and  an  undiminishing  store  of  vivid  re- 
miniscence ;  in  the  matter  of  penmanship  he  was  passion's 
slave.  Possibly  my  opinion  is  biased  from  having  had  to 
write  out  so  many  of  his  dispatches  on  a  typewriter,  and  so 
often  some  of  them  twice,  owing  to  the  mistakes.  Type- 
writing, it  is  well  known,  is  an  art  in  which  improvement  is 
rarely  achieved  by  the  amateur  ;  one  reaches  a  certain  degree 
of  speed  and  inaccuracy,  and  after  that,  no  amount  of  practice 
makes  one  any  better.  If  there  were  too  many  mistakes  in  a 
dispatch  it  would  have  to  be  written  out  again.  There  never 
seemed  to  be  any  reason  why  Sir  Edmund's  dispatches  should 
ever  end,  and  they  were  just  as  remarkable  for  quantity  as 
for  length.  He  was  exceedingly  kind  and  always  amiable, 
to  talk  to  or  rather  to  listen  to ;  he  was  the  same  in  his  dis- 
patches ;  one  had  the  sensation  of  coasting  pleasantly  down- 
lull  on  a  bicycle  that  had  no  break,  and  save  for  an  accident 
was  not  likely  to  stop. 

Michael  Herbert,  the  Councillor,  was  a  complete  contrast  to 
Sir  Edmund  in  many  ways.     With  him  one  felt  not  only  the 


PARIS  191 

presence  of  a  brake,  but  of  steel-like  grasp  on  that  brake — a 
steel-like  grasp  concealed  by  the  sua  vest  of  gloves  and  a  high, 
refined  courtesy  and  the  appearance  of  a  cavalier  strayed  by 
mistake  into  the  modern  world.  Never  was  there  an  appearance 
more  deceptive  in  some  way-  ;  in  so  far,  that  is  to  say,  as  it 
seemed  to  indicate  apathy  or  indifference  or  lack  of  fibre.  He 
had  a  will  of  iron  and  a  fearless  and  instant  readiness  to  shonldei 
any  responsibility,  however  grave  or  perplexing.  He  was  a 
man  of  action,  and  an  ideal  diplomat.  At  one  of  his  posts 
they  called  him  "th<-  butcher."  At  that  time  the  men  who 
enjoyed  the  highest  reputation  in  the  Diplomatic  Service,  and 
who  seemed  to  be  the  most  promising,  were  perhaps  Charles 
Eliot,  Cecil  Spring-Rice,  and  Arthur  Hardinge  ;  and  in  every 
one  of  these  cases  the  promise  was  fulfilled  ;  but  as  a  diplomat, 
I  think  anyone  would  agree,  that  Herbert  excelled  them  all 
and  easily,  although  the  others  might  be  in  one  case  more  in- 
tellectual or  more  brilliant,  in  another  more  erudite.  Herbert 
had  a  steely  strength  <>f  purpose,  a  quick  eye,  and  the  power 
of  making  up  his  mind  at  once,  as  well  as  a  shrewd  under- 
standing of  the  world  and  especially  of  the  foreign  world,  and  a 
quiet  far-sightedness.  Moreover,  he  had  the  charm  that  arises 
from  natural  and  native  distinction,  and  a  subtle  flavour  which 
came  from  his  being  intensely  English,  and  at  the  same  time 
a  citizen  of  the  world,  without  any  admixture  of  artificial 
cosmopolitanism.  He  would  have  been  at  home  in  any  period 
of  English  history  ;  whether  at  the  Black  Prince's  Court  at 
Bordeaux,  at  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  at  Kenilworth,  at 
Whitehall,  or  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna. 

Had  he  dressed  himself  up  in  the  shimmering  and  sombre 
satins  and  the  waving  plumes  of  the  Vandyk  period  they  would 
have  seemed  to  be  his  natural,  his  everyday  clothes. 

I  could  imagine  him  putting  his  inflexible  determination, 
expressed  in  thin,  metallic  tones  of  deferential  and  courteous 
deprecation,  lit  up  by  gleams  of  a  sharp  and  shy  humour, 
against  the  perhaps  equally  obstinate,  but  unfortunately  Less 
wise  and  less  constant,  wishes  of  Charles  1.  I  can  imagine 
him.  with  his  pale  face  and  slight  stoop,  listening  with  quiet 
appreciation  to  the  jokes  of  FalstafI,  at  the  first  performance 
of  Henry  IV.',  or  signing,  without  a  Bicker  of  hesitation,  a 
dispatch  to  Drake  or  Raleigh  that  wonld  mean  war  with  Spain  ; 
or  shutting  his  snuff-box  with  a  sharp  snap,  as  he  saw  through 


192  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

some  subtle  wile  of  Talleyrand  ;  or  listening,  civil  but  quite 
unabashed,  to  a  storm  of  invective  from  Napoleon. 

One  day  someone  in  the  Chancery  remarked  on  the  peculiarly 
nauseous  odour  of  the  food  that  is  given  to  foxhounds.  "  I 
like  it,"  he  said.     "  I  used  to  eat  it  as  a  child." 

I  have  always  thought  the  most  crucial  test  to  which  a  new 
piece  of  verse  or  a  modern  picture  can  be  put  is  to  imagine 
what  effect  the  verse  would  produce  in  an  anthology  of 
another  epoch  or  the  picture  in  a  gallery  of  old  masters. 
Herbert  as  a  personality  and  as  a  diplomatist  could  have  stood 
any  test  of  this  kind,  and  placed  next  to  any  of  the  old  masters 
or  the  old  masterpieces,  in  character  and  statesmanship, 
without  suffering  from  the  comparison  ;  indeed,  so  far  from 
suffering  any  eclipse,  his  personality  would  only  have 
emerged  more  signally  and  more  distinctly,  with  the  melan- 
choly suavity  of  its  form  and  the  unyielding  resilience  of  its 
substance. 

In  April  1899,  the  second  centenary  of  the  death  of  Racine 
was  celebrated  in  Paris  by  a  performance  of  Racine's  Berenice 
at  the  Theatre  francais.  This  performance  was  one  of  the 
landmarks  in  my  literary  adventures.  Bartet  played  Berenice, 
and  I  do  not  suppose  that  Racine's  verse  can  ever  have  been 
more  sensitively  rendered  and  more  delicately  differentiated. 
Between  the  acts,  M.  Du  Lau,  a  fine  connoisseur  of  life  and  art, 
took  me  behind  the  scenes  and  introduced  me  to  Bartet.  They 
talked  of  the  play.  Around  us  hovered  an  admiring  crowd, 
and  whispered  homages  were  flung  to  the  artist,  like  flowers. 
It  was  like  a  scene  in  a  Henry  James  novel,  a  page  from  the 
Tragic  Muse.  They  agreed  that  Racine's  loveliest  verses  were 
in  this  play  :  "  Des  vers  si  nuances,"  as  Du  Lau  said.  Bartet 
wore  a  lilac  cloak  over  white  draperies,  and  a  high  ivory  diadem, 
and  when  we  said  good-bye  Du  Lau  kissed  her  hand  and  said : 
"  Bon  soir,  charmante  Berenice." 

If  anyone  is  inclined  to  think  Racine  is  a  tedious  author 
they  cannot  do  better  than  read  Berenice.  It  is  the  model 
of  what  a  tragedy  should  be.  The  drama  is  simple  and 
arises  naturally  and  inevitably  from  the  facts  of  the  case,  which 
are  all  contained  in  one  sentence  of  Suetonius  :  "  Titus  Reginam 
Berenicen,  cui  etiam  nuptias  pollicitus  ferebatur,  statim  ab 
urbe  dimisit  invitus  invitam."  That  is  to  say,  Titus  loved 
Berenice  and,  it  was  believed,  had  promised  her  marriage.     He 


PARIS  193 

sent  her  away  from  Rome,  against  his  <  »wn  will  as  well  as  against 
hers,  as  soon  as  he  came  to  the  throne. 

It  is  the  eternal  conflict  between  public  duty  and  personal 
inclination. 

"  With  all  my  will,  but  much  against  my  heart, 

\\  c   two   now  part 

My  very  dear, 

Our  solace  is  the  sad  road  lies  so  clear  ; 

Go  thou  to  East, 

I   West." 

Coventry  Patmore's  Ode  sums  up  the  whole  tragedy.  The 
sentiments  the  charzu  ters   express  are   what    any   characters 

would  have  said  in  such  a  situation  now  or  a  thousand  years 
ago,  and  would  be  just  as  appropriate  and  true  if  the  protagonists 
of  the  drama  belonged  to  Belgravia  or  to  the  Mile  End  Road. 
The  verse  is  exquisite. 

Antiochus,  who  loved  Berenice  in  vain,  says  to  her  as  he 
leaves  her  : 

"Que  vous  dirai-jc  enfin  ?   je   fuis  des  ycux  distrait-. 
Qui  me  vovant  toujotm  ne  me  voyaient  jamai 

The  tragedy  is  full  of  musical  lines,  sad  and  suggestive  and 
softly  reverberating,  with  muted  endings  such  as  : 

"  Dans  l'Orient  desert  quel  devint  mon  ennui  ? 
je  demenraj  longtemps  errant  dans  C6saree, 
Lieut  charmants,  ou  mon  coeur  vous  avait  adoree," 

and  some  of  the  most  poignant  words  of  farewell  ever  uttered  : 

"Pour  jamais!    Ah  Seignenr  I    songez-vons  on  vous-mime 
Combien  ce  mot  cruel  est  affreux  quand  on  aime  ? 
Dans  un  mois,  dans  un  an,  comment  soulTrirons  nous, 
Seigneur,  que  tant  de  mers  me  s6parent  de  vous  ? 
Que  le  jour  recommence  et  que  le  jour  finisse, 
Sans  que  jamais  Titus  puisse  voir  Berenice." 

The  Prince  oi  Wales  passed  through  Paris  and  stayed  there 
a  night  that  winter  and  dined  at  the  Embassy,  and  we  had  to 
wear  special  coats  and  be  careful  they  had  the  right  number  of 
buttons  on  tin m. 

T  got  to  know  .1  good  many  French  people,  and  some  of  those 
who  had  been  famous  in  the  days  of  the  Second  Empire  i  Madame 
de  Gallitftt  and  Madame  de  Pourtales.  Madame  de  Pourtal&s 
had  grey  hair,  but  time,  which  had  taken  away  much  from  hex 

13 


i94  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  stamped  her  with  his  pitiless  seal,  had  not  taken,  and  was 
destined  never  to  take,  away  the  undefinable  authority  that 
alone  great  beauty  possesses,  and  never  loses,  nor  her  radiant 
smile,  which  would  suddenly  make  her  look  young. 

Once  at  a  party  at  Paris  many  years  after  this,  at  the 
Jaucourts'  house,  I  again  saw  Madame  de  Pourtales.  It  was 
not  long  before  she  died.  Her  hair  was,  or  seemed  to  be,  quite 
white,  and  that  evening  the  room  was  rather  dim  and  lit  from 
the  ceiling  ;  her  face  was  powdered  and  she  appeared  quite 
transfigured ;  the  whiteness  of  her  hair  and  the  effect  of  the 
light  made  her  face  look  quite  young.  You  were  conscious  only 
of  dazzling  shoulders,  a  peerless  skin,  soft  shining  eyes,  and  a 
magical  smile.  She  put  out  everyone  else  in  a  room.  She 
looked  like  the  photographs  of  herself  taken  when  she  was 
a  young  woman.  One  saw  what  she  must  have  been,  and 
everybody  who  was  there  agreed  that  here  was  an  instance  of 
the  undefinable,  undying  persistence  of  great  beauty  that  just 
when  you  think  it  is  dead,  suddenly  blooms  afresh  and  gives 
you  a  glimpse  of  its  own  past. 

Reggie  Lister  told  me  that  he  had  once  asked  Madame  de 
Pourtales  what  was  the  greatest  compliment  that  had  ever  been 
paid  her.  She  said  it  was  this.  Once  in  summer  she  had  been 
going  out  to  dinner  in  Paris.  It  was  rather  late  in  the  summer, 
and  a  breathless  evening,  she  was  sitting  in  her  open  carriage, 
dressed  for  dinner,  waiting  for  someone  in  the  clear  daylight. 
It  was  so  hot  she  had  only  a  tulle  veil  round  her  shoulders. 
While  she  was  waiting  a  workman  passed  the  carriage,  and 
when  he  saw  her  he  stood  and  gaped  in  silence  ;  at  last  he  said : 
"  Christi  !  que  tu  es  belle  !  " 

I  had  already  written  some  short  parodies  of  four  French 
authors  which  I  wished  to  get  published.  A  friend  of  mine 
sent  them  to  Henri  de  R6gnier  and  asked  his  advice.  His 
opinion  was  extremely  favourable.  He  said,  and  I  quote  his 
words,  so  that  he  may  bear  the  responsibility  for  my  publishing 
such  a  thing  in  Paris :  "  J'ai  lu  les  amusants  pastiches  de  M. 
Baring.  Bourget,  Renan,  Loti  ou  France  pourraient  avoir 
ecrit  chacun  des  pages  qui  soient  moins  eux."  "  II  faut  pour 
avoir  fait  cela  une  science  bien  delicate  de  la  langue  francaise. 
Conseillez  done  a  Monsieur  Baring  de  faire  imprimer  une  petite 
plaquette.  Elle  representerait  a  elle  seule  de  gros  livres,  ce  qui 
sera  delicieux."     I  sent  the  parodies  to  Lemerre  and  he  accepted 


PARIS  195 

them,  and   they  were    published    ill   Paris  by  his  firm.      The 
pamphlet  wa  >  called  Hildesheim,  and  the  small  edition  was  soon 

sold  out.    The  little  bonk  wa- will  received  by  the  French,  and 
I  got  a  good  deal  of  fun  <>ut  of  it. 

Another  literary  adventure  I  had  at  this  time  was  a  corre- 
spondence I  started  in  the  Saturday  Review.  Mas  Beerbohm, 
in  an  article  on  a  French  translation  of  Hamlet,  said  something 
about  the  French  language  being  lacking  in  suggestiveness  and 
mystery.  I  wrote  a  letter  saying  that  the  French  language  was 
as  suggestive  to  a  Frenchman  as  the  English  language  was  to  an 
Englishman,  up  >n  which  a  professor  wrote  to  say  that  the  Frencli 
language  was  only  a  bastard  language,  and  that  when  a  French- 
man wrote  of  a  girl  as  being  beaucoup  belle  he  was  talking  pidgin- 
Latin.  Many  people  then  wrote  to  point  out  that  the  professor 
was  talking  pidgin-French,  and  a  certain  H.  B.  joined  in  the  fray, 
quoting  the  " Chanson de  Roland,"  and  saying  that  an  English- 
man who  u>eil  the  phrase  beaucoup  belle  in  France  would  be 
treated  with  the  courtesy  due  to  strangers,  but  a  Frenchman 
would  be  preparing  for  himself  an  unhappy  manhood  and  a 
friendless  old  age.  It  was  a  terrible  comment,  he  added,  on 
the  modern  system  of  primary  education.  The  controversy 
then,  as  nearly  always  happens,  wandered  into  the  channel  of 
a  side-issue,  where  it  went  on  merrily  bubbling  for  several 
weeks. 

English  people  used  to  stream  through  Paris  all  the  yen 
round.  One  was  constantly  asked  out  to  dinner,  both  by  them 
and  by  the  French.  One  night  I  dined  with  Admiral  Maxse,  and 
the  other  guest  was  M.  Clemenceau.  M.  Clemenceau  was  in  those 
days  conducting  a  violent  campaign  for  Dreyfus  in  the  Press, 
and  was  a  thorn  in  the  flesh  of  the  Government.  I  was  severely 
reproved  for  dining  with  him  the  next  day.  I  knew  a  few 
Frenchmen  of  letters  ;  M.  Henri  de  R£gnier,  Melchior  de  Vogue 
Andre*  Chevrillon,  Edouard  Rod,  Madame  Darmesteter. 

I  remember  at  om  of  Anatole  France's  receptions  (I  only 
attended  very  few,  as  in  those  days  a  foreigner  felt  uncomfort 
able  in  circles  where  tin-  Dreyfus  case  was  being  discussed — it 
was    too    inui  li   of   a    family  affair)   Anatole   France  talked  of 

I  1  hylus.  He  said  the  texts  we  possess  of  M  chylus  are 
shortened,  abbreviated  forms  of  the  plays,  almost,  speaking 
with  exaggeration,  like  the  libretto  of  an  opera  founded  on  a 
well-known  drama,  almost  as  if  we  only  p     1       1  an  operatic 


196  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

libretto  of  Hamlet  or  Faust,  but  he  added  :  "  Pourtant  ceux  qui 
ont  admire  Aschyle  ne  sont  point  des  imbeciles." 

But  literature  was  rarely  discussed  anywhere  in  those  days, 
as  L'affaire  dominated  everything  and  excluded  all  other 
topics. 

In  August  came  the  Rennes  trial,  and  the  excitement  reached 
its  climax.  Galliffet  was  minister  of  war,  and  I  heard  him  make 
his  first  speech  in  the  Chamber.  "  Assassin  !  "  shouted  the 
left.  "  C'est  moi,  Messieurs,"  said  Galliffet,  and  waited  till  they 
had  finished.  During  the  month  of  August,  he  used  to  dine 
every  night  at  the  "Cercle  de  l'Union."  The  club  was  quite 
deserted.     I  used  often  to  sit  at  his  table. 

He  told  me  that  many  people  in  the  Club  would  probably 
not  speak  to  him  when  they  returned,  for  his  having  accepted 
the  portfolio  at  such  a  time.  "  They  will  turn  their  backs  on  me 
probably,"  he  said.  "Mais,"  he  added,  with  a  chuckle,  "  ils 
ne  se  permetteront  pas  une  impertinence."  He  used  to  tell 
me  many  interesting  things.  He  said  the  most  beautiful 
woman  he  had  ever  seen  in  his  life  was  Georgiana,  Lady  Dudley, 
at  one  of  the  early  Paris  Exhibitions,  and  after  her,  Madame 
de  Castiglione.  I  never  knew  whether  he  had  believed  in  the 
guilt  or  innocence  of  Dreyfus,  but  I  knew  he  was  determined  the 
case  should  end  somehow  and  by  a  verdict  which  should  bring 
about  an  apaisement. 

The  General  was  a  picturesque  and  striking  figure,  not  tall 
nor  imposing,  but  carved,  as  it  were,  in  some  enduring  granite- 
like substance,  with  steely  eyes,  a  quick,  rather  hoarse,  jerky 
utterance,  and  a  very  direct  manner,  a  little  alarming  to  a  new- 
comer, owing  to  its  abrupt  frankness,  and  his  way  of  saying 
what  he  thought  in  the  most  pointed,  Gallic  manner.  His 
illustrations,  too,  and  his  confessions  were  sometimes  startling. 

In  conversation  he  leapt  over  all  conventions,  with  the  same 
gaiety  and  gallantry  that  had  made  him  say  at  Sedan  :  "  Tant 
que  vous  voudrez,  Mon  General."  In  the  early  days  of  the 
case  he  had  been  strongly  in  favour  of  revision. 

When  the  verdict  of  the  Court  of  Rennes  was  announced, 
and  Dreyfus  subsequently  pardoned,  a  curious  thing  happened. 
Although  the  topic  had  been  raging  daily  for  years  to  the 
exclusion  of  everything  else,  exciting  everywhere  the  fiercest 
passions,  and  dividing  every  family  in  France,  estranging  friend- 
ships, and  breaking  careers,  the  very  moment   the  decision 


PARIS  197 

was  made  known,  the  topic  dropped  from  the  minds  of  men 

instantly  and  finally,  as  though  it  had  never  existed. 

My  own  point  of  view,  which  I  sometimi  found  was  shared 
by  others,  was  that  I  believed  Dreyfus  to  be  innocent,  but  J 
loathed  the  Dreyfusards.  Commenting  on  this,  Andrew  Lang 
wrote  to  me  :  "  People  like  us,  who  hate  vivisei  inn  and  anti- 
vivisectionists,  who  believe  Dreyfus  was  innocent  and  loathe 
Dreyfusards  (though  anti-Dreyfusards  were  really  worse),  have- 
no  business  on  this  foolish  planet." 

I  often  went  to  the  play,  and  the  chief  enjoyment  I  d<  n 
was  from  what  Sarah  Bernhardt  did  in  those  days,  about  most 
of  which  I  shall  deal  with  separately.  She  must  have  a  chapter 
to  herself.  Of  the  rest  I  remember  but  little  except  a  revival 
of  La  Belle  llelhie  with  its  enchanting  tunes,  and  some  funny 
songs  at  Montmartre;  Rejane  in  Zaza  and  La  Robe  Rouge, 
and  a  terrifying  play  at  the  Theatre  Antoine  called  En  Paix, 
about  a  man  who  is  shut  up  in  a  lunatic  asylum,  when  he  is 
sane,  and  who  ends  by  going  mad.  This  play  was  said  not  only 
to  have  been  founded  on  fact,  but  to  have  been  written  by  a 
man  whose  brother  had  been  shut  up  in  a  private  lunatic 
asylum  by  some  conspiring  greedy  relations. 

The  man  whose  brother  was  thus  treated  went  to  Law,  but 
without  avail,  so  as  a  last  resource  he  wrote  a  play  in  which 
he  exposed  the  facts,  which  were  briefly  these  :  A  greedy  family 
wish  to  get  one  of  their  members  out  of  the  way.     They  say 
he  is  mad  and  get  him  sequestered  in  a  mad-house.     He  has  a 
just  brother  who  tries  to  get  him  released,  but  the  brother  finds 
himself  faced  with  the  obstinacy  of  professionalism  when  he 
declare-  the  sequestered  man  is  not  mad  ;   the  lunatic  experts 
say  he  dues  not  understand  the  intricacies  of  the  disease,  and 
when  be  Loses  his  temper,  the  doctors  say:   "You,  too,  are 
showing  signs  of  the  family  madness."     The  man  who  is  shut 
up  is  quick  tempered  ;   a  sojourn  with  lunatics  sharpens  his 
temper,  and  the  play  ends  by  his  being  dragged  out  by  sinister- 
looking    warders,    crying  out  :     "  A  la   douche  !  '       I   could 
not    sleep   after   seeing   this  spectacle,    which    lost    nothing 
in   the  realistic  interpretation  of  actors  such  as  Antoine  and 
(iemier. 

In  September,  1  went  for  a  short  time  on  leave,  and  stayed 
at  Lynton,  North  Devon,  with  the  Cornishes  in  a  delightful 
little  house  called  the  Chough's   Nest.     It   was  a  warm,  soft 


igS  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF^MEMORY 

ivindy  Devonshire  September.     Hubert  and  I  bathed  in  the 

great   breakers.     We  had  wonderful  teas  in   the   valley,    and 

followed  the  staghounds  on  Exmoor.     We  talked  of  all  the 

books  under  the  sun,  and  I  wrote  a  poem  in  blank  verse  which 

was  afterwards  published  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  Review. 

Later  in  the  autumn,  I  stayed  a  few  days  at  a  chateau  near 

Fontainebleau,  and  saw  the  forest  in  all  the  glory  of  its  autumn 

foliage,  with  the  tall  trees  ablaze,  like  funeral  torches  for  the 

dying  year  ;   and  the  gardens  of  the  chateau,  and  the  splendid 

rooms  seemed  more  melancholy  than  ever,  as  though  the  ghosts 

of  the  kings  and  queens  of  France  were  there    unseen ;  and, 

looking  at  the  gorgeous  raiment  of  the  fading  forest,  I  thought 

of  Mary  Stuart  putting  on  her  most  splendid  robes  on  the 

morning  of  her  execution,  and  mounting  the  scaffold  in  flaming 

satin. 

"  And  all  in  red  as  of  a  funeral  flame, 
And  clothed  as  if  with  sunset." 

There  are  no  sadder  places  in  the  world  than  Versailles,  Fon- 
tainebleau, and  Compiegne  ;  those  empty,  deserted  shells  where 
there  was  once  so  much  glory  and  so  much  gaiety,  so  much 
bustle  and  so  much  drama,  and  which  are  now  hollow  museums 
laid  bare  to  the  scrutiny  of  every  profane  sight-seer. 

During  the  autumn  of  1899,  in  Paris,  I  received  a  visit  from 
Reggie  Balfour,  whom  I  had  known  at  Cambridge,  although  he 
went  to  Cambridge  after  I  had  left.  He  was  a  brilliant  scholar 
and  had  done  great  things  at  Cambridge.  He  had  been  staying 
at  Angers  to  study  French.  We  talked  of  books,  of  the  Dreyfus 
case,  and  he  suddenly  said  that  he  felt  a  strong  desire  to  become 
a  Catholic.  I  was  extremely  surprised  and  disconcerted. 
Up  till  that  moment  I  had  only  known  two  people  who  had 
become  Catholics :  one  was  a  relation,  who  had  married  a 
Catholic,  and  the  other  was  an  undergraduate,  who  had  never 
discussed  the  matter  except  to  say  he  must  have  all  or  nothing. 
When  Reggie  Balfour  told  me  this  I  was  amazed.  I  remember 
saying  to  him  that  the  Christian  religion  was  not  so  very  old, 
and  so  small  a  strip  in  the  illimitable  series  of  the  creeds  of 
mankind ;  but  that  if  he  believed  in  the  Christian  revelation, 
and  in  the  Sacraments  of  the  Anglican  Church,  he  would  find 
it  difficult  to  turn  round  and  say  those  Sacraments  had  been  an 
illusion.  I  begged  him  to  wait.  I  said  there  was  nothing  to 
prevent  his  worshipping  in  Catholic  churches  without  commit- 


PARIS  199 

ting  himself  intellectually  to  a  step  that  most  cramp  his  freedom. 
I  advised  him  to  live  in  the  porch  without  entering  the  building. 
I  said  finally:     'My  trouble  is  I  cannot  believe  in  the  firsl 

proposition,  the  source  of  all  dogma.  If  1  could  do  that,  if 
I  could  tell  the  first  lie,  I  quite  see  that  all  the  rest  would 
follow." 

He  took  me  one  morning  to  Low  Mass  at  Notre  Dame  des 
Victoires.  I  had  never  attended  a  Low  Mass  before  in  my  life. 
It  impressed  me  greatly.  I  had  imagined  Catholic  services 
were  always  long,  complicated,  and  overlaid  with  ritual.  A 
Low  Mass,  I  found,  was  short,  extremely  simple,  and  somehow 
or  other  made  me  think  of  the  catacombs  and  the  meetings 
of  the  Early  Christians.  One  felt  one  was  looking  on  at  some- 
thing extremely  ancient.  The  behaviour  of  the  congregation, 
and  the  expression  on  their  faces  impressed  me  too.  To  them 
it  was  evidently  real. 

We  worked  together  at  some  poems  I  had  written,  and 
Reggie  arranged  to  have  a  small  pamphlet  of  them  privately 
printed  for  me,  at  the  Cambridge  University  Press,  which  was 
done  that  Christmas. 

When  we  got  back  to  London,  he  sent  me  this  epitaph,  which 
is  translated  from  the  Latin,  and  is  to  be  found  at  Rome  in  the 
Church  of  St.  John  Lateran,  the  date  being  about  1600  : 

"  Ci-git  Robert  Pechom,  anglais,  catholique,  qui  apres  la 
rupture  de  l'Angletcrre  avec  l'eglise,  a  quitte  l'Angleterre  ne 
pouvant  y  vivre  sans  la  foi  et  qui,  venu  a  Rome  y  est  mort  ne 
pouvant  y  vivre  sans  patrie." 

The  next  year  saw  the  opening  of  the  Exhibition.  On  the 
17th  of  March,  I  went  with  Reggie  Lister  to  the  first  night 
of  L'Aiglon.  It  was  a  momentous  first  night.  All  the  most 
notable  people  in  the  literary  and  social  world  of  Paris  were 
there  :  Anatole  France,  Jules  Lemaitre,  Halevy,  Sardou,  Robert 
de  Montcsquiou,  Albert  Vandal,  Henry  Houssaye,  Paul  Hervieu, 
Coquelin,  Madame  Greffuhle.  The  excitement  was  tense. 
Sarah  had  a  tremendous  reception.  When  she  spoke  the  line, 
which  occurs  in  the  first  scene,  "  Je  n'aime  pas  beaucoup  que  la 
France  soit  neutre,"  there  was  a  roar  of  applause,  but  this,  one 
felt,  was  political  rather  than  artistic  enthusiasm.  The  first 
quiet  dialogue  between  the  Duke  and  the  courtiers  held  the 
audience,  and  we  felt  that  Sarah's  calm  and  biting  irony  j>or- 
tended  great  reserves  held  in  store,  and  when  the  scene  of  the 


200  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

history  lesson  followed,  which  Sarah  played  with  an  increasing 
accelerando  and  crescendo,  and  when  she  came  to  the  lines  : 

"  II  suit  l'ennemi ;    sent  qu'il  l'a  dans  la  main  ; 
Un  soir  il  dit  au  camp  :    '  Demain  !  '  Le  lendemain, 
II  dit  en  galopant  sur  le  front  de  bandiere  : 
'  Soldats,  il  faut  finir  par  un  coup  de  tonnerre  !  ' 
II  va,  tachant  de  gris  l'etat-major  vermeil ; 
L'armee  est  une  mer  ;    il  attend  le  soleil ; 
II  le  voit  se  lever  du  haut  d'un  prornontoire  ; 
Et,  d'un  sourire,  il  met  ce  soleil  dans  1'histoirel"1 

she  carried  them  off  with  a  pace  and  an  intensity  that  went 
through  the  large  theatre  like  an  electric  shock.  People  were 
crying  everywhere  in  the  audience,  and  I  remember  Reggie  Lister 
saying  to  me  in  the  entr'acte  that  what  moved  him  at  a  play  or 
in  a  book  was  hardly  ever  the  pathetic,  but  when  people  did  or 
said  splendid  things. 

The  rest  of  the  play,  from  that  moment  until  the  end,  was 
a  triumphant  progression  of  cunningly  administered  electric 
thrills  which  were  deliriously  received  by  a  quivering  audience. 

When  it  was  all  over  and  people  talked  of  it  the  next  and 
the  following  days  in  drawing-rooms  and  in  the  press,  the 
enthusiasm  began  to  cool  down. 

The  following  extracts  from  an  article  which  I  wrote  in  the 
Speaker  about  it,  immediately  after  the  performance,  give  an 
idea  of  the  impression  the  play  made  at  the  time  : 

"  Monsieur  Rostand,  thanks  to  his  rapid  and  brilliant  career, 
and  the  colossal  success  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  is  certainly  the 
French  author  of  the  present  day  who  attracts  the  greatest 
amount  of  public  attention  in  France,  whose  talent  is  the  most 
keenly  debated,  whose  claims  are  supported  and  disputed  with 
the  greatest  vehemence.  His  popularity  in  France  is  as  great 
as  that  of  Mr.  Kipling  in  England  ;  and  in  France,  as  is  the  case 
with  Mr.  Kipling  in  England,  there  are  not  wanting  many  and 
determined  advocates  of  the  devil.  Some  deny  to  M.  Rostand 
the  title  of  poet,  while  admitting  that  he  is  a  clever  playwright  ; 
some  say  that  he  has  no  poetical  talent  whatsoever.  In  the  case 
of  poetical  plays  the  public  is  probably  in  the  long  run  the  only 
judge.  Never  in  the  world's  history  has  it  been  seen  that  the 
really  magnificent  poetical  play  has  proved  a  lasting  failure, 

1  There  is  nothing  remarkable  in  the  verse,  but  as  a  piece  of 
dramatic  action  the  speech  was  supremely  effective. 


PARIS  201 

or  a  really  bad  poetical  play  a  perennial  success.  Of  course 
there  have  been  plays  whit  h,  like  other  works  thai  have  come 
before  their  season  the  public  have  taken  y<  ars  to  appreciate  ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  public  have  patronised  plays  of 
surprising  mediocrity  and  vulgarity  ;  these  works,  however, 
have  never  resisted  the  hand  of  time.  But  in  the  main  the 
public  has  been  right,  and  those  who  take  the  opposite  view 
generally  belong  to  a  class  alluded  to  by  Pope  : 

'  So  much  they  scorn  the  crowd,  that  if  the  throng 
By  chance  go  right,  they  purposely  go  wrong.' 

Certainly  in  M.  Rostand's  case,  whatever  may  be  the  exact 
'place'  of  his  plays  in  the  evolution  oi  the  world's  poetical 
drama,  one  thing  is  quite  certain  :  his  plays  are  triumphantly 
successful.  This  for  a  play  is  a  merit  in  itself.  After  the 
triumph  of  Cyrano  it  was  difficult  to  believe  that  L 'A iglon  would 
attain  the  same  level  of  merit  and  success,  and  never  was 
a  success  more  discounted  beforehand.  For  weeks  L'Aiglon 
was  the  main  topic  of  conversation  in  Paris,  and  provided  end- 
less copy  for  the  newspapers.  Another  thing  is  certain  :  how- 
ever the  aesthetic  value  of  L'Aiglon  may  be  rated  in  the  future, 
it  constitutes  for  the  present  another  gigantic  success.  Never 
did  a  play  come  at  a  more  opportune  moment.  At  a  time 
when  the  French  are  thinking  that  their  country  has  for  a  long 
time  been  playing  too  insignificant  a  part  in  European  politics, 
win  n  the  country  is  still  convalescent  and  suffering  from  the 
vague  discomfort  subsequent  on  a  feverish  crisis,  fretting  and 
chafing  under  the  colourless  mediocrity  of  a  regime  that  falls 
short  of  their  ilamboyant  ideal,  M.  Rostand  comes  skilfully 
leading  a  martial  orchestra,  and  sets  their  pulses  throbbing, 
their  ears  tingling,  and  their  hearts  beating  to  the  inspiring 
tunes  of  Imperial  France. 

M.  Rostand's  play  is  certainly  a  forward  step  in  his  poetical 
career.  It  has  the  same  colour  and  vitality  as  Cyrano;  the 
same  incomparable  instinct  for  stage  effect,  the  same  skill  and 
dexterity  in  the  manipulation  of  words  which  amounts  to 
jugglery,  the  same  fertility  in  poetical  images  and  felicitous 
couplets  that  we  find  in  his  earlier  works;  but,  besides  this, 
it  has  something  thai  they  have  no1  a  graver  atmosphere,  a 
larger  outlook,  a  deeper  note  ;  the  fabric,  though  the  builder's 
skill  is  the  same,  is  less  perfect  as  a  whole,  more  irregular,  but 


202  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

in  it  we  hear  mysterious  echoes,  and  the  footfall  of  the  Epic 
Muse,  which  compensates  for  the  unevenness  of  the  carpentry. 

'  In  L'Aiglon  we  breathe  the  atmosphere  of  the  epic  of 
Napoleon.  Although  the  scenes  which  M.  Rostand  presents 
to  us  deal  only  with  the  sunset  of  that  period,  the  glories  and 
vicissitudes  of  that  epoch  are  suggested  to  us  ;  we  do  not  see 
the  things  themselves,  but  we  are  conscious  of  their  spirit,  their 
poetic  existence  and  essence.  M.  Rostand  evokes  them,  not 
by  means  of  palpable  shapes,  but,  like  a  wizard,  in  the  images 
of  Ins  phrases  and  the  sound  of  his  verse,  and  thus  we  see  them 
more  clearly  than  if  they  had  been  presented  to  us  in  the  form 
of  elaborate  tableaux  or  spectacular  battle-pieces. 

"  The  existence  of  Napoleon  n.  was  in  itself  a  tragic  fact. 
Yet  more  tragic  if,  as  Metternich  is  reported  to  have  said  of 
him,  he  had  '  a  head  of  iron  and  a  body  of  glass.'  And  a  degree 
more  tragic  still  is  M.  Rostand's  creation  of  a  prince  whose 
frail  tenement  of  clay  is  consumed  by  ambition  and  aspiration, 
and  who  is  conscious,  at  times,  of  the  vanity  of  his  aspiration 
and  the  hopelessness  of  his  ambition.  Thus  tossed  to  and  fro, 
from  ecstasy  to  despair,  he  is  another  Hamlet,  born,  not  to 
avenge  a  crime  against  his  father,  but  to  atone  for  his  father's 
crimes.  Perhaps  the  most  poetical  moment  of  the  play  is 
when  the  prince  realises,  on  the  plain  of  Wagram,  that  he  himself 
is  the  atonement  ;  that  he  is  the  white  wafer  of  sacrifice  offered 
as  an  expiation  for  so  many  oceans  of  blood.  M.  Rostand  has 
chosen  this  theme,  pregnant  with  pathos,  as  his  principal 
motif.  It  is  needless  to  relate  the  play.  .  .  .  The  close  of  the 
Fifth  Act  is  perhaps  the  finest  thing  in  conception  of  the  whole ; 
in  it  we  see  Napoleon,  after  the  failure  of  an  attempted  escape 
to  France,  alone  on  the  battlefield  of  Wagram,  pale  in  his  white 
uniform  on  the  great  green  moonlit  plain,  with  the  body  of  the 
faithful  soldier  of  the  Old  Guard,  who  killed  himself  rather 
than  be  taken  by  the  Austrians,  lying  before  him.  Gradually 
in  the  sighing  winds  Napoleon  imagines  he  hears  the  moans  of 
the  soldiers  who  once  strewed  the  plain,  until  the  fancy  grows 
into  hallucination,  until  he  sees  himself  surrounded  by  regi- 
ments of  ghosts,  and  hears  the  groans,  the  call,  and  the  clamour 
of  phantom  armies  growing  louder  and  louder  till  they  culminate 
in  the  cry  of  '  Vive  l'empereur.'  He  hears  the  tramping  of 
men,  the  champing  and  neighing  of  chargers,  and  the  music  of 
the  band  ;  he  thinks  the  '  Grande  Armee  '  has  come  to  life,  and 


PARIS  203 

niches  joyfully  to  meet  it  ;  the  vision  is  th<  d  dispelled,  ami  the 

irony  of  the  reality  is  made  plain,  for  it  is  the  white  uniforms  of 
the  Austrian  regiment  (of  which  he  is  Colonel)  that  appear  in 
the  plain.  The  scene  is  almost  Shakespearean  in  its  effect  of 
beauty  and  terror. 

"  Finally,  in  the  last  Act,  we  see  the  Roi  de  Rome  dying  in 
his  gilded  cage  while  he  listens  to  the  account  of  his  baptism 
in  Paris,  which  is  read  out  to  him  as  he  dies.  He  who  as  a  child 
'  eut  pour  hochet  la  couronne  de  Rome '  is  now  an  obscure 
and  insignificant  Hapsburg  princeling,  dying  forgotten  by  the 
world,  without  a  friend,  and  under  the  eye  of  his  imperturbable 
enemy. 

"  The  play  has  already  been  accused  of  incoherence,  lengthi- 
ness,  and  inequality  ;  of  too  rapid  transitions,  of  a  clash  in 
style  between  preciosity  and  brutality.  It  has  been  compared 
unfavourably  with  Cyrano.  .  .  .  Fault  is  found  now,  as  it  was 
before,  with  the  form  of  M.  Rostand's  verses  ;  they  are  no 
doubt  better  heard  on  the  stage  than  read  in  the  study,  and 
this  surely  shows  that  they  fulfil  their  conditions.  His  verses 
are  not  those  of  Racine,  of  Alfred  de  Vigny,  or  of  Lecomte  de 
Lisle  .  .  .  but  they  have  a  poetic  quality  and  a  value  of  their 
own  ;  and  while  their  clarion  music  is  still  ringing  in  my  ears 
I  should  think  it  foolish  to  quarrel  with  them  and  to  criticise 
them  in  a  captious  spirit  ;  possibly  on  reading  L'Aiglon  the 
impression  may  be  different.  For  the  present,  still  under  the 
spell  of  the  enthusiasm  and  shouts  of  applause  which  his  couplets 
inspired  on  the  memorable  first  night  of  the  play,  I  can  but 
thank  the  author  who  brought  before  my  eyes,  with  the  skilful 
and  clamorous  music  of  his  harps  and  horns,  his  trumpets  and 
fifes  and  drums,  the  vision  of  an  heroic  epoch  and  the  shadows 
of  Homeric  battles — the  red  sun  and  the  cannon  balls  shivering 
the  ice  at  Austerlitz,  the  Pope  crowning  another  Caesar  at 
Notre  Dame,  Moscow  in  flames  and  the  Great  Army  scattered 
on  the  plains  of  Russia,  and  the  lapping  of  the  tideless  sea 

round  St .  1  lelena." 

Many  of  those  who  had  been  most  enthusiastic  at  the  firsi 
night  of  L'Aiglon  lost  no  time  in  saying  they  had  been  mistaken, 
and  that  it  was  after  all  but  a  poor  affair.  Someone  said  that 
Rostand's  verse  was  made  en  caoutchouc.  I  heard  someone 
ask  Robert  de  Montesqtdou  his  opinion  soon  after  tin'  play 
was  produced.     He  said  he  thought  the  verse  was  in  the  I 


204  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Victor  Hugo  tradition  ;  some  of  it,  Metternich's  monologue 
on  Napoleon's  hat,  very  fine.  Somebody  mentioned  the  more 
sentimental  verses  on  La  Petite  Source  :  "  Cela  doit  etre,"  said 
Montesquiou,  "  de  Madame  Rostand." 

Arthur  Strong,  after  he  saw  the  play,  told  me  it  had  carried 
him  away,  and  the  fact  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  being  a  woman,  and 
not  a  young  woman,  had  mattered  to  him  no  more  than  the 
footlights  or  the  painted  scenery  ;  he  had  accepted  it,  he  had 
been  made  to  accept  it  gladly,  by  the  fire  of  the  play  and  the 
power  of  the  interpretation. 

The  Paris  Exhibition  of  1900  was  opened  on  the  14th  of 
April,  and  the  whole  of  the  Embassy  staff  attended  that 
ceremony  in  uniform.  I  remember  little  of  it.  The  features 
of  the  Exhibition  were  the  trottoir  roulant,  a  moving  platform, 
that  took  visitors  all  round  the  Exhibition  without  their  having 
to  stir  a  foot  ;  the  pictures  in  the  Grand  Palais  ;  the  little  city 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine,  where  every  nation  was  repre- 
sented by  a  house,  and  where,  in  the  English  house,  there  was 
a  room  copied  from  Broughton  Castle,  full  of  Gainsboroughs  ; 
the  Petit  Palais,  a  gem  in  itself ;  and,  besides  these,  there 
were  the  usual  features  of  all  exhibitions — side-shows,  bales 
of  chocolate,  and  galleries  full  of  machinery  and  implements. 

Towards  the  end  of  April  I  was  taken  by  M.  Castillon  de 
Saint  Victor  for  an  expedition  in  a  free  balloon.  I  had  been 
up  twice  in  a  captive  balloon  in  the  Jardin  d'Acclimatation,  and 
had  not  enjoyed  the  experience,  especially  once  on  a  windy  day. 
I  was  not  at  all  sure  I  was  not  going  to  dislike  the  free  balloon, 
and  I  felt  a  pang  of  fear  whenever  I  thought  of  it  beforehand ; 
but  when  the  moment  of  starting  came,  and  the  balloon  was 
released,  and  rose  as  gently  and  as  imperceptibly  as  a  puff  of 
smoke  from  Saint  Denis,  and  soared  higher  and  higher  into  the 
dazzling  sky  without  noise,  without  our  experiencing  any  effect 
of  motion  or  breeze,  I  felt  intoxicated  with  pleasure.  Wc 
went  up  to  three  thousand  feet.  It  was  like  reaching  another 
planet,  an  Olympic  region  of  serenity  and  light,  and  one  had  no 
desire  to  leave  it  or  to  descend  again  to  the  earth. 

We  ate  luncheon  from  a  basket  and  drank  a  little  rum, 
which  was  said  to  be  the  best  beverage  in  a  balloon,  and  we 
took  photographs  from  the  air.  I  little  thought  that  I  should 
one  day  have  something  to  do  with  aircraft,  air  photographs, 
and  all  the  many  details  of  air  navigation.     We  floated  on 


PARIS  205 

across  Paris  in  a  south-easterly  direction.  We  came  down  low- 
over  a  chateau  belonging  to  the  Rothschilds'  and  over  the 
forest  of  Crecy;  later  in  the  afternoon,  we  dropped  a  guide 
rope  and  floated  over  the  country  at  a  height  of  about  two 
hundred  feet,  and  as  the  evening  came  on,  the  balloon  came 
down  still  lower  and  sailed  along  ju-t  over  t  he  tree-tops.  Finally 
we  landed.  The  balloon  hopped  like  a  football,  the  basket  car 
was  overturned,  and  the  gas  was  let  out.  We  landed  in  a 
deserted  piece  of  flat  country,  but  no  sooner  was  the  balloon  on 
the  ground  than,  as  always  happens,  a  crowd  sprang  from 
nowhere  and  helped  OS.  The  balloon  was  put  in  a  cart,  and  we 
walked  to  the  town  <>f  Provins,  which  was  not  far  off,  and  there 
we  took  the  train  to  Paris.  The  next  time  I  visited  Provins 
it  was  the  General  Headquarters  of  the  French  Army  during 
the  latter  part  of  the  European  War. 

1  spent  a  week  of  that  spring  at  Fontainebleau  and  Chantilly. 
There  were  a  great  many  English  people  in  Paris.  One  night, 
at  the  opera,  in  a  box,  an  English  lady  was  sitting,  a  large 
emerald  poised  high  on  her  hair  ;  the  audience  looked  at  nothing 
else,  and  an  old  Frenchman,  who  had  been  an  ornament  of  the 
Second  Empire,  came  up  to  me  in  the  entr'acte  and  said: 
"  II  est  impossible  d'etre  plus  jolie  que  cettefemme."  Shortly 
after  this  I  travelled  up  to  Paris  from  Fontainebleau  with  this 
same  lady.  The  train  was  crowded,  and  we  just  managed  to 
find  room  in  the  barest  of  provincial  railway  carriages.  There 
were  some  private  soldiers  in  the  carriage,  and  some  substantial 
women  in  sabots  with  large  baskets.  They  gazed  at  her  with 
childish  delight,  unmixed  admiration,  and  surprised  wonder, 
as  she  -at,  making  the  boards  of  the  third-class  carriage  look 
like  a  throne,  in  cool,  diaphanous,  lilac  and  white  muslins  and 
a  large  bunch  of  flowers,  a  vision  of  radiance  and  grace  ;  it 
reminded  me  of  the  large  masses  of  lilies  of  the  valley  and  roses 
you  suddenly  meet  with  in  a  dark,  narrow  street  corner  on  the 
first  fine  day  of  spring  in  Florence. 

We  went  to  a  shop  in  Paris  where  she  wanted  to  buy  a  pair 
of  gloves.      When  she  asked  how  much  they  were,  the  lady  who 
was  serving  her  said  :  "  Pour  vous  rien,  Madame,  vous  h 
jbtie  !  " 

I  n>ed  to  see  a  great  deal  of  Monsieur  and  Madame  de 
Jauconrt,  whom  I  could  remember  ever  since  the  early  days  of 
my  childhood.     Monsieur  de  Jaucourt  had  the  most  delightful 


206  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

way  of  expressing  things.  One  day  when  Madame  de  Jaucourt 
was  pressing  myself  and  another  of  the  secretaries  to  stay  with 
them  in  the  country,  he  said :  "  Ma  chere,  les  jeunes  gens  ont 
beaucoup  mieux  a  faire  que  d'aller  passer  des  heures  a  la 
campagne  !  "  He  was  passionately  fond  of  Paris.  "  On  me  gate 
mon  cher  Paris,"  he  used  to  say.  After  luncheon,  he  would 
interview  the  cook  and  discuss  every  detail  of  last  night's  dinner, 
praising  this  and  criticising  that,  with  extraordinary  nicety  and 
precision  ;  and  when  he  gave  a  dance  in  his  house  for  boys  and 
girls,  on  the  afternoon  preceding  it,  he  would  have  different 
samples  of  lemonade  and  orangeade  sent  up  to  taste  and  choose 
from,  to  see  if  they  were  sweet  enough  but  not  too  sweet.  The 
lemonade  was  for  the  juvenile  buffet.  Women's  bets  used  to 
amuse  him,  and  when  they  talked  about  racing,  he  would  say : 
"  Les  paris  des  femmes  sont  a  crever  de  rire."  He  was  a  con- 
noisseur of  artistic  things,  and  enjoyed  a  fine  house,  and  beautiful 
objets  d'art.  He  insisted  on  my  going  to  see  the  chateau  of  Vaux, 
which  he  said  was  the  finest  house  he  knew.  He  said  what 
distinguished  it  from  other  houses  was  that  it  was  not  crammed 
with  valuable  things  for  the  sake  of  ostentation,  show,  or  orna- 
ment, but  where  a  piece  of  furniture  was  wanted,  there  it  would 
be,  and  it  would  be  a  good  one. 

Monsieur  de  Jaucourt  had  a  house  not  far  from  Paris  in  the 
country,  and  I  remember  playing  croquet  one  day  there.  His 
daughter,  Francoise,  aimed  carefully  at  the  ball  and  missed  the 
hoop,  upon  which  M.  de  Jaucourt  said,  with  a  sigh  :  "  Ma  pauvre 
fille,  tuas  jou£sansr6flechir."  I  often  used  to  dine  at  the  "Cercle 
de  rUnion."  There  were  about  four  or  five  old  men  who  used 
to  dine  there  every  night ;  a  few,  a  very  few,  younger  men,  but 
no  quite  young  Frenchmen. 

One  night  someone  arrived  and  asked  for  some  cold  soup. 
There  was  none.  In  a  fury  of  passion  this  member  asked  for 
the  book  of  complaints.  When  it  was  brought,  he  wrote  in  it : 
"  N'ayant  pas  pu  trouver  un  consomme*  froid  j'ai  du  diner  hors 
du  Club." 

One  night  the  new  house,  built  by  Count  Boni  de  Castellane 
in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  was  being  discussed.  Someone  said 
it  was  like  Trianon,  and  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  keep  up. 
Someone  else  who  was  there  said  :  "  Mais  Boni  est  beaucoup  plus 
riche  que  Louis  xiv."  M.  Du  Lau  and  General  Galliffet  used 
often  to  dine  there  to  discuss  the  days  of  their  youth  and  talk 


PARIS  207 

over  the  beauties  and  even  the  wines  of  the  past  ;  General 
Galliffet  told  us  one  night  how  he  won  sums  of  money  by  playing 
with  a  piece  of  rope  taken  from  a  gibbet  in  his  pocket,  and  that 
the  best  wine  he  hud  ever  drunk  in  his  life  was  in  the  Rhine 
country.  Now  they  are  all  dead,  and  I  suppose  their  place  is 
taken  by  those  who  were  the  older  young  men  in  those  days, 
but  I  have  no  doubt  that  they  sit  round  in  the  same  chairs  and 
sometimes  complain  if  there  is  no  consomme  froid  to  be  had. 

In  the  summer  of  1900,  I  went  on  leave  to  London  for  a  few 
weeks  and  attempted  to  pass  an  examination  in  International 
Law  after  a  few  weeks'  preparation.  I  went  up  for  the  examina- 
tion, and  I  don't  think  I  was  able  to  answer  a  single  question  ; 
my  crammer  told  me  I  had  not  the  legal  mind.  At  the  end  of 
the  summer,  I  was  told  that  the  Foreign  Office  wanted  me  to  go 
to  Copenhagen,  and  at  the  beginning  of  August  I  started  for 
Denmark  as  Third  Secretary  to  Her  Majesty's  Legation. 


CHAPTER    XI 
COPENHAGEN 

I  ARRIVED  at  Copenhagen  in  August.  I  went  there  direct 
from  Paris  and  crossed  whatever  intervening  seas  lie 
between  Denmark  and  Germany  via  Hamburg  and 
Kiel.  I  had  been  given  an  ointment  made  of  tar  by  a  French 
hair  specialist  to  check  my  rapidly  increasing  baldness,  and  I 
applied  it  before  I  went  to  bed  in  my  cabin,  which  contained 
three  other  berths.  When  the  other  passengers,  who  had  in- 
tended to  share  my  cabin,  put  their  heads  into  it,  they  were 
appalled  by  the  smell  of  tar,  and  thought  that  they  had  been 
given  berths  in  the  sail-room  by  the  steward.  They  com- 
plained loudly,  and  refused  to  sleep  there,  so  I  had  the  cabin 
to  myself. 

I  stayed  at  the  Hotel  d'Angleterre,  and  on  the  morning  of  my 
arrival  presented  myself  to  the  Minister,  Sir  Edward  Goschen. 
He  was  alone  at  the  Legation.  I  took  rooms  in  a  street  not  far 
from  the  Legation,  and  settled  down  to  the  quiet  routine  of 
Legation  life  in  a  small  capital. 

Copenhagen  in  August  seemed  unusually  quiet.  The  sentries 
outside  the  Amalienborg  Palace  looked  like  big  wooden  dolls 
in  their  blue  uniforms,  white  trousers,  white  belts,  and  bear- 
skins. 

I  immediately  began  to  have  Danish  lessons  from  the 
British  Vice-Consul,  who  was  a  Dane,  and  we  soon  began  to  read 
Hans  Andersen  in  Danish.  The  diplomatic  world  in  Copen- 
hagen was  a  little  world  by  itself.  It  consisted  of  the  Russian 
Minister,  Count  Benckendorff,  who,  when  I  arrived,  was  there 
by  himself  ;  the  Austrian  Minister,  Count  Wildenbruch,  who 
lived  at  the  Hotel  d'Angleterre,  and  never  went  out  and  rarely 
saw  anybody  ;  the  French  Minister,  M.  Jusserand,  one  of  the 
most  erudite  of  English  scholars  besides  being  one  of  the  most 

charming  of  Frenchmen ;  and  the  German  Minister,  M.  Schon, 

208 


COPENHAGEN  209 

who  had  a  passion  for  dressing  up  in  fancy  dress  ;  the  Norwegian 
Minister,  M.  de  Knagenhjelm ;  and  the  Italian  Minister. 

The  diplomatic  world  mixed  little  with  the  Danes.  1 
once  heard  a  Dane  say  to  another  Dane :  "  Do  you  receive 
diplomats  ?  "  in  the  same  tone  of  surprise  as  would  have 
been  appropriate  had  the  question  been :  '  Do  you  receive 
police-spies  ?  " 

I  think  the  theatres  were  shut  when  I  arrived,  and  the  only 
amusements  were  to  go  out  sailing  which  I  used  to  do  often 
with  Sir  Edward,  who  had  a  yacht,  and  in  the  evenings  to  have 
dinner  at  the  Tivoli  music-hall,  which  was  an  out-of-door  park 
full  of  side-shows  and  was  pleasantly  illuminated. 

The  staff  of  the  British  Legation  consisted  of  a  First  Secre- 
tary, Sir  Alan  Johnstone,  and  a  Chancery  servant :  a  Dane  called 
Ole,  who  was  a  charming,  simple  person  like  a  character  in 
Hans  Andersen,  vaguely  intoxicated  sometimes,  paternal,  easily 
upset,  and  endlessly  obliging. 

Sir  Alan  Johnstone  had  a  little  house  in  the  country,  and 
there  I  often  used  to  spend  Sunday,  and  there  I  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Count  Benckendorff.  The  first  time  I  met  him 
we  had  a  violent  argument  about  the  Dreyfus  case.  He  was  a 
firm  believer  in  Dreyfus'  innocence  and  so  was  I,  but  that  did 
not  prevent  us  arguing  as  though  we  held  diametrically  opposite 
opinions. 

In  the  middle  of  August,  Edmund  Gosse  paid  a  vi-.it  to  Den- 
mark and  I  went  to  him  meet  at  Munkebjerg,  which  entailed 
a  long  tri'- --country  journey  over  many  canals  and  in  trains 
that  were  borne  on  steamers.  Munkebjerg  was  a  lovely  place 
on  the  top  of  a  high  hill  with  little  woods  reaching  down  to  the 
water.  There,  for  the  first  time,  I  experienced  the  long,  green, 
luminous  twilights  of  the  north.  Edmund  Gosse  was  inspired 
by  the  surroundings  to  write  a  book  called  Hypolympia,  which 
he  afterwards  dedicated  to  mc.  He  imagined  that  the  gods  of 
Greece  arrived  at  Munkebjerg  immediately  after  their  exile, 
and  on  that  theme  he  wove  a  fantasy. 

One  of  the  most  important  duties  at  Copenhagen  was  to  go 
to  the  railway  Marion  to  meet  the  various  royalties  who  used 
to  visit  the  King  of  Denmark,  and  another  one  was  to  receive 
English  Royalties  at  the  door  of  the  English  church  when  they 
attended  divine  service  on  Sundays.  We  used  often  to  see 
the  King  of  Denmark  out  riding,  and  although  I  think  he  was 
14 


210  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

then  eighty  years  old,  he  looked  on  horseback,  so  extraordinarily 
young  was  his  figure,  like  a  man  of  thirty. 

I  learnt  Danish  fairly  quickly  and  soon  I  could  follow  the 
plays  at  the  Kongelige  Theatre  and  at  other  theatres.  The 
Kongelige  Theatre  was  a  State-supported  institution  with  an 
ancient  tradition  and  an  excellent  troupe  of  actors  and  dancers. 
They  performed  opera  :  Gluck,  Mozart,  and  Wagner;  ballets  ; 
the  classic  Danish  comedies  of  Holberg  ;  Moli&re  ;  Shakespeare  ; 
modern  comedies  and  the  dramas  of  Ibsen,  Tolstoy,  and  Holger 
Drachman.  The  Shakespeare  productions  were  particularly 
interesting  and  far  more  remarkable  than  any  I  ever  saw  in 
Berlin.  They  made  use  of  the  Apron  Stage ;  on  a  small  back- 
cloth  at  the  back  of  the  stage  changed  with  the  changing  scene  ; 
the  back-cloth  was  framed  in  a  Gothic  arch,  which  was  supported 
by  pillars  raised  on  low  steps.  A  curtain  could  be  lowered 
across  this  arch,  and  the  actors  could  proceed  with  the  play  in 
front  of  this  curtain,  without  necessitating  the  lowering  of  the 
larger  curtain.  This  small  scene  was  extremely  effective.  It 
was  just  enough  to  give  the  eye  the  keynote  of  the  play  ;  and 
in  the  historical  plays  of  Shakespeare,  in  Richard  III.  for 
instance,  it  was  ideal.  I  saw  Richard  III.,  King  Lear,  and  A 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream ;  the  latter  was  a  beautiful  and  gay 
production  ;  the  actor  who  played  Bottom  had  a  rich  vein  of 
humour  and  a  large  exuberant  personality,  and  the  fairy  dances 
were  beautifully  organised  and  executed.  Of  the  modern 
drama  I  saw  Tolstoy's  Powers  of  Darkness,  which  made  a 
shattering  effect,  Ibsen's  Doll's  House  and  Hedda  Gabler,  and 
Holger  Drachman 's  Gurre,  and  some  comedies  by  Otto  Benzon. 

The  performance  of  the  Doll's  House  with  Fru  Hennings' 
Nora  was  unforgettable.  I  have  seen  many  Noras ;  Eleonora 
Duse  and  Rejane  and  Agnes  Sorma  in  Berlin  ;  but  Fru 
Hennings  played  the  part  as  if  it  had  been  written  for  her  ;  she 
was  Nora  ;  she  made  the  whole  play  more  than  natural,  she 
made  it  inevitable.  "  Quelle  navrante  ironie  !  quel  desenchante- 
ment  a  fond  !  "  said  Jules  Lemaitre,  writing  about  Duse's  per- 
formance of  Magda.  In  Fru  Hennings'  interpretation  of  Nora, 
the  irony  was  indeed  harrowing,  and  the  disenchantment  com- 
plete ;  but  irony,  disillusion,  weariness,  disgust  were  all  merged 
into  a  wonderful  harmony,  as  the  realities  of  life  gradually 
dawned  on  the  little  singing-bird,  and  the  doll  changed  into  a 
woman.     She  made  the  transformation,  which  whenever  I  had 


COPENHAGEN  211 

seen  the  play  before  seemed  so  difficult  to  believe  in,  of  the  Nora 
of  the  first  act  into  the  Nora  of  the  last  ai  I  seem  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world.  Then  Ini  HenningS  had  the 
advantage  of  being  a  Dane  and  of  speaking  the  words  of  the 
play  in  the  language  in  which  they  had  been  written.  She 
had  a  musical  rippling  voice  and  a  plaintive  grace  of  gesture. 
Holger  Drachman's  drama  Gurre  was  a  terrible  and  intent  ly 
dramatic  poetic  drama,  with  a  love  duet  of  impassi<  med  lyric  ism 
and  melody,  and  an  almost  unbearable  scene,  in  which  the 
Cjueen  has  her  rival  scalded  to  death  in  a  steam-bath.  Hedda 
Gabler  I  confess  to  not  being  able  to  endure  when  I  saw  it  ;  it 
was  beautifully  acted  ;  too  well  acted  ;  there  seemed  to  be  no 
difference  between  what  was  going  on  on  the  stage  and  in  tin 
audience.  I  had  a  sudden  uprush  of  satiety  with  Norwegian 
drama  :  with  Ibsen,  with  problem  plays,  with  Denmark,  with 
the  North  ;  and  I  remember  going  out  of  the  theatre  after  the 
second  act,  in  revolt  and  disgust,  and  not  being  able  to  stand 
any  more  of  it.  But  that  was  an  accidental  impression  arising 
from  a  surfeit  of  such  things,  and  from  an  overdose  of  Scandi- 
navian gloom  and  Norwegian  complexity;  a  short  course  of 
musical  comedies  would  have  soon  enabled  one  to  appreciate 
the  drama  of  Ibsen  once  more  ;  as  it  was,  I  heard  it  after  a 
year  and  a  half's  stay  at  Copenhagen,  and  at  that  moment  I 
had  had  just  a  drop  too  much  of  that  kind  of  thing. 

I  also  saw  When  we  dead  awaken  when  it  was  first  produced, 
and  this  again  had  no  effect  on  me,  save  one  of  vague  and 
teasing  perplexity. 

The  music  at  Copenhagen  was  as  interesting  as  the  drama. 
Mozart's  opera-  were  admirably  given  at  the  Kongelige  Theatre. 
I  remember  a  fine  performance  of  Don  Giovanni,  the  Nozze 
di  Figaro,  and  (iluck's  Orpheo,  concerts  where  Beethoven's 
Symphonies  were  played,  and  a  recital  of  l'adercwski  where 
he  played  Liszt's  arrangement  of  the  Erlkonig.  When  he  came 
to  the  end  of  it,  the  impression  was  that  he  himself  had 
experienced  that  ride  in  the  night  ;  that  he  had  battled  with 
the  Erl  King  for  the  life  of  the  child,  and  that  it  was  he  and 
not  the  child  who  was  dead. 

As  soon  as  I  could  speak  Danish,  I  made  several  friends 
among  the  Danes.  I  soimtmies  spent  the  evening  at  Dr.  George 
Brandes'  house,  and  more  often  at  that  of  Otto  Benzon,  the 
playwright,  who  was  extremely  kind  tome.     The  intelligentsia 


212  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

of  Copenhagen  were  highly  cultivated  ;  they  were  well-to-do 
and  had  line  collections  of  modern  pictures.  The  meals  were 
long  and  were  often  followed  by  a  still  longer  supper.  The 
days  were  short  in  winter  at  Copenhagen  ;  the  sun  appeared 
to  set  at  two  ;  the  wind  blew  in  every  direction  at  once  down 
the  Bred  Gade.  Copenhagen  in  winter  had  depressing  elements. 
I  had,  in  the  meantime,  made  great  friends  with  the  Bencken- 
dorffs  at  the  Russian  Legation. 

Just  as  in  the  art  of  writing,  and  in  fact  in  all  arts,  the  best 
style  is  that  where  there  is  no  style,  or  rather  where  we  no 
longer  notice  the  style,  so  appropriate  and  so  inevitable,  so 
easy  the  thing  said,  sung,  or  done  is  made  to  appear,  so  in 
diplomacy  the  most  delightful  diplomats  were  those  about 
whom  there  was  no  diplomatic  style,  nothing  which  made  you 
think  of  diplomacy.  Michael  Herbert  was  one  of  these,  and  so 
pre-eminently  was  Count  Benckendorff.  When  he  was  Am- 
bassador in  London  he  took  root  easily  in  English  life,  and  made 
friends  instantly  and  without  effort  in  many  different  worlds, 
so  his  personality  and  his  services  are  well  known  to  English- 
men. I  doubt,  however,  whether  they  know  how  great  the 
services  were  which  he  rendered  at  times  both  to  our  country 
as  well  as  to  his  own. 

All  through  the  war,  till  a  few  days  before  his  death,  he  was 
giving  his  whole  heart  and  soul  to  his  work,  and  every  nerve 
of  his  being  was  strained  to  the  utmost.  The  war  killed  him 
as  certainly  as  if  he  had  fought  in  the  trenches.  He  was 
astonishingly  far-sighted  and  clear-sighted.  In  1903  he  told  me 
there  would  be  a  revolution  in  Russia  directly  there  was  a  war. 
At  the  time  of  the  Agadir  crisis,  he  told  me  that  the  future  of 
Europe  entirely  depended  on  the  policy  of  the  German  Govern- 
ment :  on  whether  the  German  Emperor  and  his  Government 
decided  or  not  to  embark  on  a  Louis  xiv.  policy  of  ambition 
and  aggression,  and  try  to  make  Germany  the  only  European 
power. 

When  the  Emperor  of  Russia  issued  the  manifesto  of  17th 
October,  and  the  Russians  were  bedecking  their  cities  with 
flags,  because  they  thought  they  had  received  a  constitution, 
he  made  it  excruciatingly  clear  that  it  was  nothing  of  the  kind  ; 
and  he  predicted  no  less  clearly  what  would  be  the  results  of  so 
ambiguous  an  act,  and  so  dangerously  elastic  a  charter. 

His  public  career  belongs  to  history.     I  had  the  privilege 


COPENHAGEN  213 

of  knowing  him  as  a  private  person  and  of  finding  in  him  the 
kindest  and  the  wisest  of  friends. 

I  think  his  most  striking  quality  was  his  keenness.  The 
way  he  would  throw  himself  into  the  discussion,  the  topic,  or 
the  occupation  of  the  moment,  whether  it  was  a  book,  a  play,  a 
picture,  a  piece  of  music,  a  political  question,  a  wolf-hunt,  a 
speech, a  problem,  even  an  acrostic  to  be  guessed,  or  the  dredging 
of  a  pond. 

Whenever  I  wrote  anything  new  he  always  made  me  read 
it  aloud  to  him,  and  he  was  in  himself  an  extraordinarily 
exhilarating  and  encouraging  public. 

He  was  all  for  one's  doing  more  and  more,  for  finding  out 
what  one  could  not  do  and  then  doing  it. 

He  once  tried  to  persuade  me  to  go  into  Parliament.  When 
I  objected  that  I  had  no  power  of  dealing  with  political  quesl  u  ins, 
and  no  understanding  of  many  affairs  that  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment is  supposed  to  understand,  he  said  :  "Rubbish!  You  could 
do  all  that  part,  just  as  you  wrote  a  parody  of  Anatole  France  ; 
people  would  think  you  knew." 

He  hated  pessimism.     He  hated  the  Oriental,  passive  view 
of  life,  especially  if  it  was  preached  by  Occidentals.     The  look- 
ing forward  to  a  Nirvana  and  a  closed  door.     He  hated  every- 
thing negative.     Suicide  to  him  was  the  one  unpardonable 
sin.     He  hated  affectation,  especially  cosmopolitan  affectation, 
what  he  used  to  call  "  lo  faux  esprit  Parisien."     "  Je  prefere," 
he  used  to  say,   "  le  bon  sens  anglais."     He  was  extremely 
argumentative  and  would  put  his  whole  soul  into  an  argument 
on  the  most  trivial  point ;  and  he  was  as  unblushingly  unscrupu- 
lous as  Dr.  Johnson  in  his  use  of  the  weapons  of  contradiction, 
although,  unlike  Dr.  Johnson,  however  heated  the  argument,  he 
was  never  rude,  even  for  a  second  ;  he  didn't  know  how  to  be 
rude.     He  spoke  the  most  beautiful  natural  French,  the  French 
of  a  more  elegant  epoch  than  ours,  with  a  slightly  classical 
tinge  in  it.     He  spoke  it  not  only  as  well  as  a  Frenchman,  but 
better  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  spoke  without  any  frills  or  unnecessary 
ornament,  either  of  phrase  or  accent,  with  complete  ease  and 
naturalness. 

He  spoke  English  just  as  naturally.  I  remember  on  one 
occasion,  shortly  after  he  arrived  in  London,  his  being  taken 
for  an  Englishman  throughout  a  whole  dinner-party  by  his 
host.     But  he  used  to  say  that  this  was  sheer  blutt  and  that 


214  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

his  command  of  the  language  was  limited.  His  beautiful 
manners,  and  the  perfection  of  his  courtesy  came  from  the  same 
absence  of  style  I  have  already  alluded  to.  He  was  natural  and 
unaffected  with  everyone,  because  he  was  chez  soi  partout ;  and 
his  distinction,  one  felt,  was  based  on  a  native  integrity,  a 
fundamental  horror  of  anything  common,  or  mean,  or  unkind, 
the  incapacity  of  striking  a  wrong  note  in  word  or  deed  :  the 
impossibility  of  hurting  anyone's  feelings.  A  member  of  the 
Russian  intelligentsia,  writing  in  a  provincial  newspaper  in 
Russia,  about  one  of  the  many  European  crises  that  threatened 
Europe  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War,  said  :  "  We 
should  have  been  dragged  into  a  war,  had  we  not  had  at  the 
time,  as  our  Ambassador  in  London,  the  first  gentleman  in 
Europe."    That  is,  I  think,  his  best  and  most  fitting  epitaph. 

I  shall  never  have  the  benefit  of  his  criticism  any  more,  his 
keenness,  his  almost  boyish  interest,  his  decided,  argumentative 
disagreement  leaping  into  a  blaze  over  a  trifling  point,  and 
never  again  enjoy  that  glow  of  satisfaction — worth  a  whole 
world  of  praise — which  I  used  to  feel  when  he  said  about  some- 
thing, whether  a  poem,  a  newspaper  article,  a  story,  or  a  letter, 
or  the  most  foolish  of  rhymes  :  "  C'est  tres  joli." 

I  moved  from  my  rooms  in  the  town  to  the  Legation  and 
had  most  of  my  meals  with  the  Goschens.  Sir  Edward's  in- 
imitable humour,  his  minute  observation  of  detail,  and  his 
keen  eye  for  the  ludicrous,  the  quaint  and  all  the  absurd  in- 
cidents of  daily  life — and  especially  of  diplomatic  life — made 
all  the  official  side  of  things,  the  dinner-parties,  the  interviews 
with  ministers,  the  ceremonies  at  the  station,  the  pompousness 
of  the  diplomats,  extraordinarily  amusing.  Besides  this,  he  was 
childishly  fond  of  every  kind  of  game,  such  as  battledore  and 
shuttlecock,  and  cup  and  ball. 

Sir  Edward  went  on  leave  in  the  autumn  of  1900,  and  for  a 
fortnight,  from  10th  October  to  22nd  October,  I  had  the  glory 
of  being  in  charge,  of  being  acting  Charge  d'Affaires  of  the 
Legation,  so  that  when  the  Foreign  Office  wrote  to  me  they 
signed  dispatches,  "Yours  with  great  truth."  The  first  thing 
which  had  to  be  done  was  to  leave  cards  on  all  the  Corps 
Diplomatique.  This  duty  was  always  carried  out  by  Ole,  the 
Chancery  servant.  I  gave  him  a  sheaf  of  my  cards  to  leave  ; 
he  left  some  of  them,  but  I  think  he  considered  that  I  was 
altogether  too  young  to  be  taken  seriously  as  a  Charge"  d'Affaires, 


COPENHAGEN  215 

so  he  left  no  cards  on  the  minor  diplomats,  who  lived  out  of  the 
immediate  radius  of  the  British  Legation.  About  three  days 
after  I  had  been  in  charge,  Count  Benckendorfi  told  me  that 
the  minor  diplomats  who  had  received  do  i  axds  from  me  had 
held  a  meeting  of  indignation  ;  I  was  to  lose  no  time  in  smooth- 
ing down  their  ruffled  sensibilities,  so  I  left  the  card-  myself. 
The  only  diplomatic  interview  I  remember  having  was  with 
the  future  King  of  Greece,  who  came  to  see  me  in  my  room 
and  talked  about  something  I  didn't  understand.  My  brief 
era  of  sole  responsibility  was  put  an  end  to  after  a  fortnight  by 
the  arrival  of  a  new  First  Secretary  in  place  of  Alan  Johnson. 
His  name  was  Herbert.  Shortly  after  his  arrival  Ethel  Smyth 
paid  a  visit  to  Copenhagen  on  her  way  back  to  England  from 
Berlin,  where  she  had  been  negotiating  for  the  performance  of 
her  opera,  Dcr  Wald.  She  wanted  to  make  the  acquaintance 
of  the  Benckendorffs,  and  she  sang  her  opera  to  us,  her  Mass, 
and  many  songs  of  Schubert,  Schumann,  Brahms,  Grieg,  besides 
many  English  and  Scotch  ballads.  Count  Benckendorff,  who 
was  musical,  was  enchanted  with  her  singing,  with  her  inter- 
pretation of  the  songs  she  sang,  "  la  richesse  de  son  execution," 
her  vitality,  her  good  humour,  her  keenness,  her  passionate 
interest  in  everything.  She  played  golf  in  the  daytime  and 
made  music  in  the  evening. 

At  Christmas,  Sir  Edward's  sons  arrived  and  we  had  a 
Christmas-tree  in  the  house,  and  a  treat  for  the  church  choir,  and 
endless  games  of  battledore  and  shuttlecock  in  the  Legation 
ballroom.  Then,  suddenly,  came  the  unbelievable  news  that 
Queen  Victoria  was  dead.  A  telegram  arrived  on  the  22nd 
January,  worded  thus  : 

"  I  am  profoundly  grieved  to  inform  you  that  the  Queen 
expired  thi>  evening  at  six-thirty.  Notify  melancholy  intelli- 
gence to  Government." 

I  was  just  going  home  for  a  little  leave,  but  now  it  seemed 
impossible:  there  would  be  too  much  to  do.  But  Sir  Edward 
insisted  on  my  going,  all  the  same.  Herbert  was  arriving  back 
from  leave,  and  he  said  he  could  get  on  without  me  ;  so  I  went. 
I  saw  the  funeral  procession  from  a  honse  near  the  Marble  Arch. 
The  only  splash  of  colour  in  the  greyness  and  gloom  of  the  long 
procession  was  the  regalia  and  the  bright  pall  od  the  gun-carriage 
that  bore  the  coffin,  and  everyone  agreed  that  the  mo^t  imposing 


2i6  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

figure  in  the  procession  was  the  German  Emperor  in  a  great 
grey  cloak.  But  the  most  impressive  feature  of  the  whole 
ceremony  was  the  attitude  of  the  crowd :  its  size,  its  silence, 
the  universal  black.  London  was  like  a  dead  city,  and  as 
someone  said  at  the  time  :  "  One  went  about  feeling  as  if  one 
had  cheated  at  cards."  I  felt  that  what  "  Onkel  Adolph  "  used 
to  say  at  Hildesheim  was  true  :  "  Die  Engldnder  lieben  ihre  alte 
Konigin  "  ("  The  English  love  their  old  Queen  "). 

In  February  I  went  to  Karlsruhe  to  hear  Ethel  Smyth's 
first  opera,  Fantasio,  performed  at  the  Hofteater  with  Mottl 
conducting.  Fantasio  is  an  opera  in  two  acts  written  on 
Musset's  play.  Ethel  Smyth  wrote  the  libretto  herself  in 
German.  The  opera  contains  some  lovely  songs,  especially 
one  that  begins  :  "  Reite  ohne  Sattelpferd,"  and  some  of  the 
most  delicate  music  Ethel  Smyth  ever  composed,  but  the 
libretto  is  undramatic,  and  there  are  not  enough  bones  in  the 
framework  to  support  the  musical  structure.  Mottl  conducted 
the  orchestra  beautifully  ;  the  opera  was  respectfully  received, 
but  without  any  great  enthusiasm.  When  the  performance 
was  over,  we  had  supper  with  the  Grand  Duchess  of  Baden, 
and  there  I  met  a  cousin  of  mine,  Charlie  d'Otrante,  whom  I 
had  not  seen  since  I  was  a  child.  He  was  now,  though  a  Swedish 
subject — his  father  was  a  Swede — an  officer  in  the  German 
Army. 

I  stayed  at  Copenhagen  till  the  spring.  The  spring  in 
Denmark  comes  with  a  rush.  All  is  wintry,  without  any  hint 
of  the  coming  change,  and  then  all  of  a  sudden,  and  in  one 
night,  the  beech  trees  are  green,  and  of  so  startling,  vivid,  and 
fresh  a  green  that  it  almost  hurts  the  eye,  and  through  them  you 
see  the  sea,  a  milky  haze,  and  the  sky  looks  as  if  it  had  been 
washed  clean. 

In  May,  I  went  to  London  for  my  first  spell  of  long  leave 
since  I  had  passed  my  examination.  I  stayed  all  June  and 
July  in  London,  and  in  the  middle  of  July  I  went  over  to  Brittany 
to  stay  a  few  days  with  Sarah  Bernhardt  at  her  house,  the  Fort 
des  Poulains  on  the  island  of  Belle- Isle,  which  is  at  the  extreme 
north  of  the  island.  This  visit  entailed  a  terrific  journey: 
first,  a  long  train  journey  with  many  changes,  then  several 
hours  on  board  a  steamer,  and  then  a  two  hours'  drive.  The 
house  was  a  little  white,  square,  flat-roofed  building  among 
the  rocks  and  a  stone's-throw  from  the  sea — a  great  roaring 


COPENHAGEN  217 

grey  sea,  with  huge  breakers,  leaping  cataracts  of  foam, 
and  beaches  of  grey  pebbles.  Sarah  Bernhardt's  son  was 
staying  there,  Clairin,  the  artist,  and  one  or  two  other  people. 
The  house  was  built  entirely  of  pitch-pine  inside.  Sarah  used 
to  appear  at  dejeuner. 

She  spent  all  the  morning  working.     In  the  afternoon  she 
played  lawn -tennis  on  a  hard  court  ;    after  dinner  we  played 
every  kind  of  game.     She  was  carrying  on  at  the  time  a  heated 
discussion  by  telegraph  with  the  poet  Catulle  Mendes  about 
the  forthcoming  production  of  a  poetical  play  of  his,  called 
La  Vierge  d'Avilon.     The  dispute  was  about  the  casting:   the 
poet  wished  one  of  the  female  parts  to  be  played  by  a  certain 
actress;    Sarah  wished    otherwise.     Telegram    after  telegram 
was  sent  and  received,  each  of  them  several  pages  in  length. 
The   poet's  telegrams  were  lyrical  and  beautifully  expressed. 
One  of  them  began:    "  Vous  etes   puissante  et  caline,"  and 
another  addressed  her  as  "  La  grande  faucheuse  des  illusions." 
How  the  matter  was  settled  ultimately,  I  never  knew.     During 
the  whole  time  I  stayed  there,  Sarah  never  mentioned  the 
theatre,  acting,  or  actors,  except  as  far  as  they  concerned  this 
particular  business  discussion.     On  the  other  hand,  she  talked 
a  great  deal  of  her  travels  all  over  the  world.     She  talked  of 
Greece,  and  I  quoted  to  her  the  line  of  some  French  poet  about 
"  des  temples  roux  dans  des  poussieres  d'or,"  and  asked  her 
whether  it  was  an  accurate  description.    She  said  :  "  Yes,  of  the 
Greek  temples  in  Italy  "  ;  but,  in  Greece,  she  said  it  was  a  case 
of  "  des  temples  roses  dans  des  poussiSres  d'argent."     She  said 
the  most  remarkable  sight  she  had  ever  seen  in  her  life  was  in 
Australia,  when,  in  a  large  prairie,  she  had  seen  the  whole  sky 
suddenly  rilled  with  a  dense  flock  of  brilliantly  coloured  birds, 
which  had  risen  all  at  once  from  the  ground  and  obscured  the 
whole  horizon  with  their  dazzling  coloured  plumage. 

She  was  irresistibly  comic  at  times,  full  of  bubbling  gaiety 
and  spirits,  and  an  admirable  mimic.  Jules  Huret  wrote,  while 
I  was  at  Paris,  an  article  about  her,  in  which  he  described  this 
side  of  her  admirably. 

"  Quand  elle  veut,"  he  said,  "  Sarah  est  d'un  comique 
extraordinaire,  par  l'outrance  de  ses  images  toujours  justes,  et 
la  violence  impreVue  de  ses  reparties.  Cctte  gaiete*  de  Sarah 
est  bien  caracteristique  de  sa  force.  C'esl  evidemment  un 
tropplein  de  sew  qui  se  re*  out  en  joie.     Elle  a  des  trouvailles, 


2i8  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

des  mimiques,  des  r^pliques,  une  verve,  des  silences  memes, 
qui  font  irresistiblement  eclater  le  rire  autour  d  'elle.  Elle 
imite  certains  de  ses  amis  avec  une  verite  comique  incroyable." 

What  struck  me  most  about  her,  when  I  saw  her  in  private 
life,  was  her  radiant  and  ever-present  common-sense.  There 
was  no  nonsense  about  her,  no  pose,  and  no  posturing.  She 
was  completely  natural.  She  took  herself  as  much  for  granted 
as  being  the  greatest  actress  in  the  world,  as  Queen  Victoria 
took  for  granted  that  she  was  Queen  of  England.  She  took  it 
for  granted  and  passed  on.  She  told  me  once  she  had  never 
wished  to  be  an  actress — that  she  had  gone  on  to  the  stage 
against  her  will  ;  she  would  greatly  have  preferred  to  have  been 
a  painter,  and  all  her  life  she  continued  to  model  as  it  was, 
and  did  some  interesting  things  in  this  line,  especially  some 
bronze  fishes  and  sea-shapes  for  which  she  found  models  at 
Belle-Isle,  but  when  she  found  she  had  got  to  be  an  actress,  she 
said  to  herself  :  "  If  it  has  got  to  be,  then  I  will  be  the  first." 

She  said  she  had  never  got  over  her  nervousness  in  playing  a 
new  part,  or  for  the  first  time  before  a  new  audience ;  if  she  felt 
the  audience  was  friendly,  this  knowledge  half-paralysed  her  ; 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  she  knew  or  guessed  the  audience  to  be 
hostile,  every  fibre  in  her  being  tightened  for  the  struggle. 
She  said  that  first  nights  at  Paris,  when  she  knew  there  would 
be  hostile  elements  and  critics  ready  to  say  she  could  no  longer 
act,  always  gave  her  the  greatest  confidence  ;  she  felt  then  it 
was  a  battle,  and  a  battle  she  could  win  ;  she  would  force  the 
critics  to  acknowledge  that  she  could  act.  She  told  me,  too, 
she  had  never  gone  an  inch  out  of  her  way  to  seek  for  friends  or 
admirers  ;  she  had  always  let  them  come  to  her  ;  she  had  never 
taken  any  notice  of  them  till  they  forced  their  attention  on  her. 
At  Belle-Isle  I  never  once  heard  her  allude  to  any  of  her  parts 
or  to  any  of  her  triumphs  ;  but  she  talked  a  great  deal  about 
current  events — of  the  people  and  politicians  she  had  met  in  her 
life,  in  all  the  countries  of  Europe — and  said  some  very  shrewd 
things  about  the  men  who  were  ruling  England  at  that  time. 

I  stayed  at  Belle-Isle  three  or  four  days,  then  I  went  back 
to  London,  and  at  the  end  of  July  I  started  for  Russia.  I  had 
been  invited  to  stay  with  the  Benckendorffs  at  their  house  in 
the  country,  Sosnofka  in  the  Government  of  Tambov.  I  did 
not  yet  know  one  word  of  Russian.  At  Warsaw  station  I  had 
to  get  out  and  change.     I  left  my  bag  for  a  moment  on  the  seat 


COPENHAGEN  219 

of  the  carriage.    This  bag  contained  my  money,  my  ticket, 

my  passport,  and  several  other  necessarie  .  When  I  came  back 
it  was  gone.  I  couldn't  even  tell  anyone  what  had  happened. 
As  the  result  of  a  conversation  in  dumb  show,  1  was  put  into 
a  train  ;  it  was  not  the  express  it  should  have  been,  but  a  slow 
train,  and  then  I  had  my  first  experience  of  the  kindness  and 
obligingness  of  the  Russian  people,  for  a  fellow-traveller  re- 
gistered my  luggage,  bought  me  a  ticket,  telegraphed  to  the 
Benckendorffs  for  me,  to  the  hotel  at  Moscow,  and  supplied  me 
with  food  and  money  for  the  journey,  which  in  this  train  took 
three  days. 

Thanks  to  the  kindness  of  this  traveller,  I  arrived  safely  at 
Moscow,  and  at  Sosnofka  the  next  day.  It  was  a  blazing  hot 
August  that  year  in  Russia.  The  country  was  burnt  and 
parched  ;  the  green  of  the  trees  had  been  burnt  away.  Sos- 
nofka is  a  larp  straggling  village,  with  thatched  houses.  Once 
every  seven  years  the  whole  village  would  probably  be  burnt 
down.  Russia  was  very  different  from  what  I  had  expected. 
I  had  read  several  Russian  books  in  translations — Tolstoy 
and  Tourgenev — but  the  background  they  had  formed  in  my 
mind  was  not  like  Russia  at  all.  In  fact,  I  had  never  thought 
of  these  books  as  happening  in  Russia.  The  people  they 
described  were  so  like  real  people,  so  like  people  that  I  had 
known  myself,  that  I  had  always  imagined  the  action  taking 
place  in  England  or  France.  I  imagined  Anna  Karenina 
happening  in  London.  Not  only  did  the  characters  seem  real 
and  familiar  to  me,  but  they  struck  me  as  being  the  only  char- 
acters I  had  ever  met  in  any  books  which  gave  me  the  impres- 
sion that  I  had  myself  known  them.  Dickens'  characters  are 
real  enough,  and  Thackeray's  characters  are  realistic  enough  ; 
I  believe  absolutely  in  Sam  Weller,  in  Mr.  Micawber,  in  Mr. 
Guppy,  in  Mrs.  Gamp,  Mrs.  Nickleby,  and  any  you  like  to 
mention  ;  the  genius  of  Dickens  has  made  me  believe  in  them  ; 
I  also  believe  in  the  existence  of  Major  Pendennis  and  Becky 
Sharp  ;  I  feel  I  might  meet  people  like  that,  but  I  never  have  ; 
whereas  with  the  characters  in  Tolstoy's  books  I  am  not  sure 
whether  they  belong  to  book'.and  at  all  ;  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
they  do  not  belong  to  my  own  past,  my  own  limbo,  which  is 
peopled  by  real  people  and  dream  people.  The  background 
which  1  called  up  in  my  mind  was  something  quite  unconnected 
with  Russian  books,  and  something  far  removed  from  reality. 


220  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

It  was  the  conventional  background  borrowed  from  detective 
stories,  and  Jules  Verne's.  Michael  Strogoff,  and  from  many 
melodramas.  That  is  to  say,  I  imagined  barbaric  houses, 
glittering  and  spangled  bedizened  Asiatic  people.  The  reality 
was  so  different.  Russia  seemed  such  a  natural  country. 
Everybody  seemed  to  be  doing  what  they  liked,  without  any 
fuss ;  to  wear  any  clothes  they  liked  ;  to  smoke  when  and 
where  they  wished  ;  to  live  in  such  simplicity  and  without 
any  paraphernalia  at  all. 

As  for  the  landscape,  my  first  impression  was  that  of  a 
large,  rolling  plain  ;  a  church  with  blue  cupolas  ;  a  windmill 
and  another  church.  The  plain  is  dotted  with  villages,  and 
every  village  is  like  the  last  ;  the  houses  are  squat,  sometimes 
built  of  logs  and  sometimes  built  of  bricks,  and  the  roofs  are 
thatched  with  straw.  The  houses  stand  at  irregular  intervals, 
sometimes  huddled  close  together  and  sometimes  with  wide 
gaps  between  them  ;  it  was  dusty  when  I  arrived  ;  the  broad 
road,  which  is  not  a  real  road,  but  an  immense  stoneless  track 
like  the  roads  in  America  and  Australia,  was  littered  with 
straw  and  various  kinds  of  messes,  and  along  it  the  creaking 
carts  groaned,  the  peasants  driving  them  leisurely  and  some- 
times walking  beside  them.  Every  now  and  then  there  was  a 
well  with  a  large  wooden  see-saw  pole  to  draw  the  water  with  ; 
and  everywhere,  and  over  everything,  the  impression  of  space 
and  leisureliness  and  the  absence  of  hurry.  The  peasants  wore 
loose  shirts,  with  a  leather  coat  thrown  carelessly  over  their 
shoulder,  or  left  in  the  cart,  and  the  women  looked  picturesque 
in  their  everyday  clothes  ;  the  folds  of  their  prints  and  calicoes, 
which  had  something  Biblical  and  statuesque  about  them,  were 
more  impressive  to  the  eye  than  the  silken  finery  which  they 
wore  when  they  went  to  church  on  Sunday. 

The  Benckendorffs  lived  at  Sosnofka  in  two  small  separate 
two-storied  houses,  which  were  close  together.  The  kitchen 
was  in  a  separate  building  apart.  In  the  pantry,  the  night- 
watchman,  Andre\  would  play  draughts  in  the  daytime  with 
Alexei,  who  cleaned  the  boots.  By  night  the  watchman 
watched  ;  and  every  now  and  then  blew  a  whistle.  The  butler, 
Alexander,  was  an  old  soldier  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  His 
ingenuity  had  no  end  ;  nor  had  his  resource.  He  could  make 
anything  and  do  anything  ;  and  in  the  course  of  one  revolving 
noon  he  could  be  chemist,  fiddler,  statesman,  and  buffoon.     He 


COPENHAGEN  221 

could  not  only  play,  but  he  could  make  any  musical  instrument. 
He  was  an  expert  mixer  of  fireworks,  an  inspired  carpenter, 
and  he  could  mend  anything.     He  bore  the  traces  of  an  early 
military  training  and  drill  in  his  upright  shoulders  ;  and  about 
once  a  month  he  would  disappear  and  be  drunk  for  two  or 
three  days.     The  house  was  housemaided  by  two  old  Russian 
peasants,  Mavra  and  Masha,  who  wore  kerchiefs  over  their  heads 
and  speckled  calico  shawls.     Mavra 's  devotion  to  the  Benckni- 
dorff  children  passed  all  expression  ;    she  cared  little  for  her 
fate  and  fortune  and  for  that  of  her  own  family  as  long  as  they 
were  alive  and  well.     Michael,  the  coachman,  was  another  great 
character  ;  he  wore  a  black  cap  with  peacocks'  feathers  sticking 
upright  in  it,  and  a  black  tunic  with  red  sleeves.     He  drove 
the  troika,  three  horses  abreast,  and  no  road,  or  rather  no  absence 
of  road,  daunted  him  ;   on  the  edge  of  an  impossible  hill,  with 
no  track  through  it,  and  nothing  in  sight  but  bushes  and  logs, 
and  nothing  to  guess  at  except  holes,  if  asked  whether  it  was 
possible  to  go  on,  he  would  always  laconically  answer,  "Moshno  " 
("  Possible  "),  and  it  always  was  possible.     There  was  an  under- 
coachman  called  Fro.     He  had  his  qualities  too  ;    and  one  of 
these  was  the  way  in  the  winter  he  would  find  and  recognise  a 
track  after  there  had  been  a  blizzard,  which  had  entirely  obliter- 
ated all  semblance  or  trace  of  any  path  or  roadway.     Some- 
times a  little  bit  of  paper  or  a  stray  twig  would  give  him  the 
clue.     Only  one  felt  just  this  :   that  Michael  would  have  been 
quite  unshaken  in  face  of  any  catastrophes  ;   the  earth  might 
luive  opened  in  front  of  one,  a  hostile  aeroplane  might  have 
barred  the  way,  a  regiment  of  machine-gunners  might  have 
been  reported  to  be  in  ambush — he  would  just  have  nodded 
and  quietly  said,  "  Moshno,"  and  nothing  more. 

After  dinner,  that  summer  we  used  to  sit  on  the  balcony 
or  on  a  stone  terrace  on  one  side  of  the  house,  and  watch  the 
message  of  light,  the  warning  halo  the  rising  moon  sent  up 
from  behind  the  hill  before  she  rose  : 

"  Perchance  an  orb  more  wondrous  than  the  moon 
Trembles  beneath  the  rim  of  the  dark  hills," 

and  listen  in  the  thick  dark  night,  while  the  peasants  in  the 
village  stamped  their  rhythmical  dances  to  the  accompaniment 
of  bleating  accordions  or  three-stringed  balalaikas  ;  some  watch- 
man's rattle  beat  time  ;    the  frogs  croaked,  and  sometimes  a 


222  THE  rUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

voice — a  rather  hoarse,  high,  slightly  sharp  voice — began  a  long- 
drawn-out,  high  wail,  and  other  voices  chimed  in,  singing  the 
same  melody  in  a  rough  counterpoint.  We  sat  at  a  little 
green  garden-table  drinking  our  coffee,  and  our  nalivka,  the 
delicious  clean  liqueur  distilled  from  cherries.  There  seemed 
to  be  no  time  in  Russia.  People  slept  when  they  felt 
inclined,  not  necessarily  because  it  was  night.  Once  when 
I  went  to  stay  with  a  friend  near  Kirsanof  he  advised  me 
to  arrive  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  if  possible,  as  the 
servants  would  enjoy  the  bustle  of  someone  arriving  when  it 
was  still  dark. 

One  evening  we  went  out  riding  through  the  woods,  and 
over  the  plains,  and  no  sooner  had  we  left  the  front  door  than 
my  pony,  altogether  out  of  control,  galloped  away  into  space. 
One  morning  we  were  called  at  one,  and  went  out  to  the  marshes 
to  shoot  wild  duck  before  the  dawn.  It  was  quite  dark  when 
we  started,  and  after  the  shooting  was  over,  and  I  shot  two 
wild  duck  dead,  we  drove  home  in  the  dawn  across  the  dewy 
plains,  when  the  whole  country  was  awakening,  the  cocks 
crowing  and  the  birds  singing,  and  the  plains  were  bathed  in 
lemon-coloured  light,  and  faint  pink  and  grey  clouds  hung 
like  shreds  from  Aurora's  scarf  across  the  horizon. 

One  night  we  camped  out  in  the  woods.  We  took  bottles 
of  beer  and  water-melons,  and  playing-cards,  and  a  camera, 
and  many  rugs.  We  slept  little  ;  the  wood  was  full  of  flies 
and  mosquitoes,  but  we  enjoyed  ourselves  much  all  the  same, 
and  came  back  with  that  pleasant  headache  which  is  the 
result  of  sleeping  on  straw  in  the  open  air  on  a  hot  August 
night,  and  covered  with  bites.  The  morning  after,  we  had  a 
wolf-shoot,  but  it  was  too  early  in  the  year  for  wolves,  and 
nobody  saw  one.  But  there  was  a  great  display,  nevertheless  ; 
a  man  rode  on  a  white  horse  and  blew  a  trumpet,  and  there 
were  a  multitude  of  beaters.  I  remember  a  short  dialogue 
bawled  slowly,  quietly,  and  sonorously  in  prolonged  accents 
across  a  whole  field  between  Andre,  the  night-watchman,  and 
Wassili,  the  keeper.  "  Who  is  that  man  yonder  ?  "  asked 
Wassili.  "  He  is  a  shepherd,"  said  Andre;  "  he  feeds  sheep." 
"  On  pastukh,  on  past  korov."  It  was  so  dignified,  so  slow, 
like  a  fragment  of  dialogue  from  the  Old  Testament.  In  the 
morning  we  used  to  have  breakfast  out  of  doors,  in  the  garden, 
under  a  tree,  with  a  pleasant  after-breakfast  interlude  of  smoking 


COPENHAGEN  223 

and  conversation  ;  then  Alexander  and  the  gardener  would 
stroll  into  the  garden,  and  there  would  1"-  endless  discussion 
about  the  pulling  down  of  some  paling,  or  the  repairing  of  some 
fence  or  chair,  or  the  painting  of  some  room  or  gate  ;  Alexander's 

volubility  had  no  limit,  and  the  gardener  was  extraordinarily 
ingenious  in  twisting  the  meaning  of  anything  into  the  opposite 
of  what  had  been  said.  We  had  luncheon  at  half-past  twelve, 
and  sat  afterwards  on  the  terrace,  till  the  great  heat  was  over, 
and  then  we  would  go  out  in  the  troika,  and  take  tea  and  a 
samovar  with  us,  or  find  a  samovar  somewhere,  and  perhaps 
bathe  in  the  river.  After  dinner,  when  it  was  too  cold  to  stay 
out,  we  would  sit  indoors  and  play  cards  at  the  green  table, 
marking  the  score  in  chalk  on  the  table  ;  and  Pierre  Bencken- 
dorff,  who  was  not  yet  an  officer,  but  still  at  the  cadet  college, 
used  to  read  out  Mark  Twain  in  German,  or  draw  pictures, 
or  make  me  draw  pictures,  while  he  gave  advice,  or  played 
the  treble  of  tunes  on  the  pianoforte. 

There  were  three  little  rooms  on  the  ground  floor  of  the 
first  house,  which  was  built  of  wood.  The  first  room  into  which 
the  small  front  hall  led  was  Count  Benckendorff's  sitting-room. 
It  had  a  writing-table  ;  a  table  where  there  was  an  array  of 
long  pipes,  neatly  arranged  ;  a  round  table  with  a  green  cloth 
on  it,  and  a  wooden  cup  and  ball  on  a  plate  ;  a  bookcase  full  of 
books  of  reference,  which  were  constantly  consulted,  whenever, 
as  so  often  occurred,  there  was  a  family  argument.  In  this 
room,  near  one  of  the  windows,  there  was  a  deal  drawing- 
table.  There  were  prints  on  the  wall.  The  next  room  had 
some  old  French  wooden  furniture  painted  with  little  flowers, 
and  a  large  grand  pianoforte,  and  a  comfortable  corner  round 
the  fireplace  ;  in  front  of  a  window,  which  went  down  to  the 
ground  and  opened  like  a  door,  there  was  a  stone  terrace  with 
orange  trees  in  pots  on  it  and  agapanthus  plants  (later  there 
were  rose  trees  as  well).  Beyond  this  there  was  a  third  room 
full  of  books,  old  books,  the  library  of  Count  Benckendorff's 
grandfather — the  books  that  had  been  modern  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  in  their  dark  brown  calf  bindings,  and  old  marbled 
papers  ;  here  was  the  newest  edition  of  Byron  in  French, 
the  poems  of  Pope  and  Corneillc  and  Voltaire  and  Gresset, 
the  letters  of  Madame  de  Severn',  the  memoirs  of  Madame 
de  Caylus,  Napoleonic  memoirs  and  the  poems  of  Ossian, 
Schiller's  plays,  and  an  early  edition  of  Gogol.     Upstairs  on 


224  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

the  landing,  there  was  a  cupboard  full  of  every  imaginable 
kind  of  novel :  the  Tauclmitz  novels  of  many  ages,  and  French 
novels  of  every  description,  the  early  Zolas,  the  early  Feuillets, 
and  Maupassant's  first  stories.  Before  going  to  bed,  we  would 
dive  into  that  cupboard,  and  one  was  always  sure,  even  in 
the  dark,  of  finding  something  one  could  read.  I  have  always 
thought  since  then,  the  ideal  bookcase  would  be  that  in  which 
you  could  plunge  a  hand  into  in  the  dark  and  be  sure  of  ex- 
tracting something  readable.  In  the  stone-house,  the  boys 
had  each  of  them  a  sitting-room  on  the  ground  floor,  and  I 
had  a  bedroom  and  sitting-room  upstairs.  Next  to  the  school 
library  at  Eton,  that  sitting-room  proved  to  be  my  favourite 
room  in  all  the  world  and  in  all  my  life  ;  and  at  its  big  table 
I  painted  innumerable  water-colours,  and  wrote  four  plays  in 
verse,  two  plays  in  prose,  three  long  books  in  prose,  besides 
translating  a  book  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  writing  endless 
letters  and  newspaper  articles.  In  this  room,  one  had  the 
feeling  of  the  world  forgetting  by  the  world  forgot,  and  one 
was  recalled  to  reality  by  a  bell,  or  by  Alexander  coming  up 
to  the  room,  as  he  always  did,  to  say  that  tea  was  ready  or 
dinner,  or  that  the  horses  were  at  the  door. 

I  felt  the  charm  of  Russia  directly  I  crossed  the  frontier  ; 
and  after  a  three  weeks'  stay  there  I  was  so  bitten  by  it  that 
I  resolved  firstly  to  learn  Russian,  and,  secondly,  to  go  back 
there  as  soon  as  I  could. 

I  went  back  to  Copenhagen,  and  stopped  some  hours  at 
Moscow  on  the  way,  and  saw  the  Kremlin,  and  had  some 
amusing  adventures  at  Testoff's  restaurant.  Pierre  Bencken- 
dorff  had  written  down  for  me  a  list  of  things  to  ask  for  ;  one 
of  which  was  caviare,  which  in  Russian  is  ikra.  But  when  I 
said  ikra  the  waiters  thought  I  said  igra,  which  means  play, 
and  merely  turned  on  the  great  mechanical  organ  which  that 
restaurant  then  boasted  of,  and  I  could  not  get  any  caviare. 

When  I  got  back  to  Copenhagen,  I  at  once  had  lessons  in 
Russian  from  the  psalomtchtchik  at  the  Russian  Church. 

On  the  19th  of  September,  King  Edward  VII.  arrived  in  Den- 
mark to  pay  his  first  visit  to  Denmark  as  King  of  England. 
The  King  was  to  arrive  at  Elsinore  in  the  Osborne.  The  Staff  of 
the  Legation  had  received  orders  to  go  to  Elsinore  and  meet 
His  Majesty  on  board  the  yacht.  His  Majesty  was  to  land  in 
time  to  meet  the  King  of  Denmark,  the  Crown  Prince  and  all 


COPENHAGEN  225 

the  Danish  Royal  Family,  the  King  of  Greece,  Queen  Alexandra, 
the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Russia,  the  Dowager  Empress  of 
Russia,  Prince  and  Princess  Charles  of  Denmark,  and  other 
members  of  the  various  Royal  Families.  We  were  to  go  in 
uniform.  The  train  started  at  eight.  I  have  already  said  I  was 
living  at  the  Legation,  but  my  rooms  were  completely  isolated 
from  Sir  Edward's  house,  and  had  no  connection  with  them. 
I  had  a  Danish  servant  called  Peter.  He  had  been  told  to  call 
me  punctually  at  seven.  He  forgot,  or  overslept  himself.  I 
woke  up  by  accident,  and  automatically,  and  found  to  my 
horror  it  was  twenty-five  minutes  to  eight,  and  the  station  was 
far  off,  and  I  had  to  dress  in  uniform.  I  dressed  like  lightning, 
but  it  is  not  easy  to  dress  like  lightning  in  a  diplomatic  uniform  ; 
the  tight  boots  are  a  special  difficulty.  I  had  no  time  to  shave. 
I  got  a  cab,  and  we  drove  at  full  gallop  to  the  station,  and  I  got 
into  Sir  Edward's  carriage  as  the  train  was  moving  out  of  the 
station.  At  Elsinore,  we  had  fortunately  some  time  to  spare 
before  going  on  board  the  Osborne,  and  I  was  able  to  get  shaved 
in  the  village.  Then  we  went  on  board  and  were  presented  to 
the  King,  and  kissed  his  hand  on  his  accession. 

That  same  night  there  was  a  banquet  at  the  Palace  of 
Fredensborg  for  the  King,  to  which  the  staff  of  the  Legation 
were  invited.  I  remember  only  one  thing  about  this  dinner, 
and  that  is  that  we  were  given  1600  hock  to  drink.  It  was 
quite  bitter,  and  had  to  be  drunk  with  about  five  lumps  of  sugar 
in  a  glass. 

After  dinner,  we  stood  round  a  large  room  while  the  Kings 
and  Queens,  the  Emperor  and  Empresses  and  Princesses,  went 
round  and  talked  to  the  guests  ;  and  this  was  the  end  of  a 
tiring  day. 

A  few  days  later  the  King  came  to  luncheon  at  the  Legation. 

There  was  one  other  Royal  arrival  which  I  shall  never 
forget.  I  cannot  place  its  date,  but  I  think  it  must  have  been 
Queen  Alexandra's  first  visit  as  Queen  to  Copenhagen.  But 
what  I  remember  is  this,  that  while  we  were  waiting  on  the 
station  platform,  Queen  Alexandra  descended  from  the  train 
all  in  black,  with  long  floating  veils,  and  threaded  her  way 
through  the  crowd  of  Royalties  and  officiaK  looking  younger 
than  anyone  present,  with  still  the  same  fairy-tale-like  g] 
of  carriage  and  movement  that  I  remembered  as  a  child,  and 
with  the  same  youthful  smile  of  welcome,  and  with  all  her 
'5 


226  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

delicacy  of  form  and  feature  heightened  by  her  mourning  and 
her  long  black  veils,  whose  floating  intricacy  were  obedient  and 
docile  to  the  undefinable  rhythm  of  her  beauty,  and  I  remember 
thinking  of  Donne's  lines  : 

"  No  spring,  no  summer  beauty  has  such  grace 
As  I  have  seen  in  one  autumnal  face." 

I  spent  that  Christmas  at  Copenhagen,  and  on  the  7th  of 
January  1902  a  dispatch  came  to  say  I  had  been  transferred 
from  the  post  of  a  Third  Secretary  at  His  Majesty's  Legation 
at  Copenhagen  to  that  of  a  Third  Secretary  of  His  Majesty's 
Embassy  at  Rome.  Before  I  left  Copenhagen  I  had  finished 
an  article  on  Taine,  an  article  on  modern  French  literature,  and 
an  article  on  Sully  Prudhomme,  for  the  new  edition  of  the 
British  Encyclopedia. 


CHAPTER    XII 
SARAH  BERNHARDT 

1SA1D   that    Sarah    Bernhardt   should  have  a  chapter  to 
herself. 

"  Les  Comediens,"  said  Jules  Lemaitre,  "tiennent 
beaucoup  dr  place  dans  nos  conversations  et  dans  nos  journaux 
parce  qu'ils  en  tiennenl  beaucoup  dans  nos  plaisirs."  Amon^-t 
all  the  many  pleasures  I  have  experienced  in  the  theatre,  the 
acutest  ami  greatest  have  been  due  to  the  art  and  genius  of 
Sarah  Bernhardt.  Providence  has  always  been  generous  and 
ye\  economical  in  the  allotment  of  men  and  women  of  geniu 
to  a  gaping  world.  Economical,  because  such  appearances  arc 
rare  ;  generous,  because  every  human  being,  to  whatever 
generation  he  belongs,  will  probably,  at  least  once  during  his 
Lifetime,  have  the  chance  of  watching  the  transit,  or  a  phase 
of  the  transit,  of  a  great  comet. 

This  is  especially  true  of  actors  and  actresses  of  geniu-. 
Their  visits  to  the  earth  are  rare,  yet  our  forefathers  had  the 
privilege  of  seeing  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Garrick  ;  our  fathers  saw 
K  li  hel,  Ristori,  and  Salvini  ;  and  we  shall  be  able  to  irrit 
\  "linger  generations,  when  they  rave  about  their  new  idol,  with 
reminiscences  of  Sarah  Bernhardt. 

Sometimes,  of  course,  as  in  this  case,  the  comet  shines 
through  several  generations.  I  have  talked  with  people  who 
have  seen  both  Rachel  and  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  with  some 
who  declared  that  in  the  first  two  acts  of  Phcdre,  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt surpassed  Rachel.  Such  was  the  opinion  of  that  sensible 
and  conservative  critic,  Francisque  Sarcey. 

The  actorV  art  dies  with  him  ;   but  the  rumour  of  it,  when  it 
is  very  great,  lives  on  the  tongue  and  sometimes  in  the  soul  of 
man,  and  forms  a  part  of  his  dreams  and  of  his  visions.    The  gi 
of  old  still  rule  our  spirits  from  their  urns  ;  and  we,  who  nevei 
saw  Rachel,  get  an  idea  of  her  genius  from  the  account-  of  hei 


228  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

contemporaries,  from  Theodore  de  Ban ville  and  Charlotte  Bronte. 
Her  genius  is  a  fact  in  the  dreams  of  mankind  ;  just  as  the 
beauty  of  Helen  of  Troy  and  the  charm  of  Mary  Stuart,  whom 
many  generations  of  men  fell  in  love  with.  So  shall  it  be  with 
Sarah  Bernhardt.  There  will,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  be  great  actresses 
in  the  future — actresses  filled  with  the  Muses'  madness  and  con- 
strained to  enlarge  rather  than  to  interpret  the  masterpieces 
of  the  world  ;  but  Providence  (so  economical,  so  generous  !) 
never  repeats  an  effect  ;  and  there  will  never  be  another 
Sarah  Bernhardt,  just  as  there  will  never  be  another 
Heinrich  Heine.  Yet  when  the  incredible  moment  comes  for 
her  to  leave  us,  in  a  world  that  without  her  will  be  a  duller 
and  a  greyer  place,  her  name  and  the  memory  of  her 
fame  will  live  in  the  dreams  of  mankind.  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt delighted  several  generations,  and  there  were  many 
vicissitudes  in  her  career  and  many  sharp  fluctuations  in  the 
appreciation  she  won  from  the  critical  both  in  France  and 
abroad  ;  nor  did  her  fame  come  suddenly  with  a  rush,  as  it 
does  to  actors  and  actresses  in  novels.  Even  in  Henry  James' 
novel,  The  Tragic  Muse,  the  development  of  the  heroine's 
career  and  the  establishment  of  her  fame  happens  far  too 
quickly  to  be  real.  Henry  James  was  conscious  of  this  himself. 
He  mentions  this  flaw  in  the  preface  he  wrote  for  the  novel 
in  the  Collected  Edition  of  his  works. 

Sarah  Bernhardt 's  career  shows  no  such  easy  and  immediate 
leap  into  fame,  nor  is  it  the  matter  of  a  few  star  parts  ;  it 
was  a  series  of  long,  difficult,  laborious,  and  painful  campaigns 
carried  right  on  into  old  age  (in  spite  of  the  loss  of  a  limb), 
and  right  through  a. European  war,  during  which  she  played 
in  the  trenches  to  the  poilus  ;  it  was  a  prolonged  wrestle  with 
the  angel  of  art,  in  which  the  angel  was  defeated  by  an  inflexible 
will  and  an  inspired  purpose. 

She  made  her  debut  at  the  Theatre  francais  in  1862,  in  the 
Iphigenie  of  Racine.     Sarcey,  writing  of  her  performance,  said  : 

"  Elle  se  tient  bien  et  prononce  avec  une  nettete  parfaite. 
C'est  tout  ce  qu'on  peut  dire  en  ce  moment."  It  was  not  until 
ten  years  later  that  she  achieved  her  first  notable  success  in 
Le  Passant,  by  Francois  Coppee,  and  that  she  was  hailed  as 
a  rising  star  as  the  Queen  in  Ruy  Bias,  at  the  Odeon,  and 
became,  in  her  own  words,  something  more  than  "  la  petite  fee 
des  etudiants." 


f. 


o 


-I 


/  r 


Portraits  ol  Sarah  Bernhardt  by  the  author  (age  7), 
drawn  in    1881 


Sarah   Bernhardt  in  the  eighties 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  229 

In  1872  she  left  the  Od eon  and  entered  the  1  heat  re  francais 
once  more.  She  reappeared  \w  Mademoiselle dt  Belle-Isle*  with 
partial  success.   In  writing  of  this  performance,  San  ey  expressed 

doubt  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  ever  achieving  power  as  well  as  grace, 
and  strength  as  well  as  charm.  "  Je  doute,"  lie  wrote,  "  que 
Mademoiselle  Sarah  Bernhardt  trouve  jamais  dans  son  delic  ieux 
organe  ces  notes  dclat antes  et  profondes,  pour  exprimer  le 
paroxysme  des  passions  violentes,  qui  transportent  une  salle. 
Si  la  nature  lui  avait  donne  ce  don,  elle  serait  une  artiste  com- 
plete, et  il  n'y  en  a  pas  de  telles  au  theatr.  ." 

It  was  during  a  performance  of  Voltaire's  Zaire,  on  a  stilling 
night  in  1873,  that  Sarah  Bernhardt  discovered  she  had 
undreamed-of  stores  of  energy  and  electric  power  at  her  dis- 
posal, and  under  her  control.  She  had  rebelled  against  having 
to  act  during  the  summer  months.  Perrin,  the  director  of  the 
Theatre  francais,  had  insisted.  When  the  night  came  when 
she  was  due  to  appear  in  Zaire  (August  6),  she  determined  to 
exhaust  all  the  power  that  was  in  her,  and  as  she  was  at  that 
time  as  frail  as  a  sylph  and  was  thought  to  be  perilously 
delicate  (spitting  blood),  she  decided  to  spite  Perrin  by 
dying.  She  strained  every  nerve  ;  she  cried  in  earnest  ;  she 
suffered  in  earnest  ;  she  gave  a  cry  of  real  pain  when  struck  by 
the  stage  dagger  ;  and  when  it  was  all  over  she  thought  her  last 
hour  must  have  come  ;  and  then  she  found  to  her  amazement 
that  she  was  quite  fresh,  and  ready  to  begin  the  performance 
all  over  again.  She  realised  then  that  her  intellect  and  will 
could  draw  when  they  pleased  on  her  physical  resources  ;  and 
that  she  could  do  what  she  liked  with  her  vocal  chords.  This  ex- 
plains a  secret  that  often  puzzled  the  spectators  of  her  art — her 
power  of  letting  herself  go,  and  after  a  violent  explosion,  just 
when  you  thought  her  voice  must  be  broken  for  ever  by  the 
effort,  of  opening  as  it  were  another  stop,  and  letting  flow  a 
ripple  from  a  flute  of  the  purest  gold. 

It  wa>  in  Phidre  that  Sarah  Bernhardt  proved  she  possessed 
not  only  grace  but  power  ;  her  rendering  of  Dona  Sol  in 
Hernant  (November  1N77)  definitely  sealed  her  reputation,  not 
only  as  a  tragic  actress,  but  as  the  incarnation  of  something 

1  Theodore  de  !'..inville  apropos  <>f  this  performance,  said  about 
Sarah  Bernhardt  !  "  I  lh'  a  refU  la  qua  lite  d'etre  tou  jours,  et  quoi  quelle 
veuille  faire,  absoluinetit  et  incuusciemment  lyrique."  Prophetic 
words  1 


230  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

new  and  exotic.     And  the  world  recognised  her  incomparable 
talent  for  speaking  verse. 

In  1879,  the  Com6die  francaise  visited  London,  and  all 
London  went  mad  about  Sarah  Bernhardt.  She  was  not  then 
the  star  in  a  cast  of  mediocrities,  she  was  a  star  in  a  dazzling 
firmament  of  stars.  Her  fellow  actors  and  actresses  were 
Coquelin,  Got,  Delaunay,  Mounet  Sully,  Worms,  Maubant,  and 
Febvre  among  the  men  ;  and  among  the  women,  Croizette, 
Baretta,  Madeleine  Brohan,  Reichemberg,  and  Madame  Favart. 
A  more  varied,  excellent,  and  complete  cast  could  not  be  im- 
agined. It  was  a  faultless  ensemble  for  tragedy  and  comedy, 
for  Racine,  for  Moli&re,  for  Victor  Hugo,  and  for  Alexandre 
Dumas  fils. 

In  1880,  the  glory  of  this  theatrical  age  of  gold  was  eclipsed 
and  diminished  by  the  flight  of  Sarah  Bernhardt.  After  a 
quarrel  arising  out  of  the  performance  of  V Aventurilre,  she 
suddenly  resigned,  and,  after  a  short  season  in  London,  in  May 
1880,  started  for  America. 

This  rupture  with  the  Theatre  francais,  which  was  largely 
due  to  the  adulation  she  received  and  the  sensation  she  made 
in  London,  was  a  momentous  turning-point  and  break  in  her 
career.  When  it  happened,  the  whole  artistic  world  deplored 
it,  and  there  are  many  critics  in  France  and  in  England  who 
never  ceased  to  deplore  it  ;  but  a  calm  review  of  the  whole 
career  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  forces  one  to  the  conclusion  that  it 
could  not  have  been  otherwise. 

Tne  whole  motto  of  her  life  was  :  "  Fairecequ'on  veut."  And 
sometimes  she  added  to  this  :  "  Le  mieux  est  l'ennemi  du  bien." 

The  Theatre  francais  at  that  time  was  indeed  an  ideal  temple 
of  art  for  so  inspired  a  priestess.  But  Sarah  Bernhardt  was 
more  than  a  priestess  of  art — she  was  a  personality,  a  force,  a 
power,  which  had  to  find  full  expression,  its  utmost  limits  and 
range  ;  and  if  we  weigh  the  pros  and  cons  of  the  matter,  I  do 
not  think  we  have  been  the  losers.  Her  art  certainly  did  suffer 
at  times  from  her  travels  and  her  unshackled  freedom  ;  she 
played  to  ignorant  audiences,  and  sometimes  would  walk  through 
a  part  without  acting  ;  she  played  in  inferior  plays.  On  the 
other  hand,  had  she  remained  in  the  narrower  confines  of  the 
Theatre  francais,  we  should  never  have  realised  her  capacities 
to  the  full.  In  fact,  had  she  remained  at  the  Theatre  francais, 
she  would  not  have  been  Sarah  Bernhardt.     We  should  have 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  231 

lost  as  much  as  we  should  have  gained.  It  is  true  we  should 
never  have  seen  her  in  plays  th.it  wire  utterly  unworthy  of  her. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  should  never  probably  have  seen  h<  I 
Dame  aux  Camelias,  her  Lorenzaccio ,  her  Hamlet.  We  should 
never  have  had  the  series  of  plays  that  Sardou  wrote  for  her  : 
Fedora,  Theodora,  La  Tosca,  etc.  Some  will  contend  that  this 
would  have  been  a  great  advantage.  But,  despise  Sardou  as 
much  as  you  like,  the  fact  remains  it  needs  a  man  of  genius 
to  write  such  plays,  and  not  only  a  woman  of  genius,  but  Sarah 
Bernhardt  and  none  other,  to  play  in  them.  In  Fidora,  Eleonora 
Duse,  the  incomparable  Duse,  could  not  reach  the  audien 
And  now,  when  these  plays  are  revived  in  London,  we  reali-e 
all  too  well,  and  the  public  reali^' 5  too,  that  there  is  none  who 
can  act  them.  It  is  no  use  acting  well  in  such  plays  ;  you  must 
act  tremendously  or  not  at  all.  La  Tosca  must  be  a  violent 
shock  to  the  nerves  or  nothing.  When  it  was  first  produud, 
Jules  Lemaitre,  protesting  against  the  play,  said  the  main 
it  nation  was  so  strong,  so  violent,  and  so  horrible,  that  it  w.t> 
in  the  worst  sense  actor-proof,  and  so  it  seemed  then.  Now  we 
know  better  ;  we  know  by  experience  that  without  Sarah 
Bernhardt  the  play  does  not  exist  ;  we  know  that  what  m 
it  almost  unbearable  was  not  the  situation,  but  the  demeanour, 
the  action,  the  passivity,  the  looks,  the  gestures,  the  moans, 
the  cries  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  in  that  situation.  Had  Sard< 
'  machine-made  "  plays  never  been  written,  we  should  never 
hive  known  one  side  of  Sarah  Bernhardt's  genius.  I  do  not  say 
it  is  the  noblest  side,  but  I  do  say  that  what  we  would  h 
missed,  and  what  Sardou's  plays  revealed,  was  an  unparalleled 
manifestation  of  electric  energy. 

The  high-water  mark  of  Sarah's  poetical  and  intellectual 
art  was  probably  reached  in  her  Pfiedre,  her  Hamlet,  and  her 
Lorenzaccio  ;  but  the  furthest  limits  of  the  power  of  her  power 
were  revealed  in  Sardou's  plays,  for  Sardou  had  the  intuition  to 
guess  what  forces  lay  in  the  deeps  of  her  personality,  and  the 
insight  and  skill  to  make  plays  which,  like  subtle  engines,  should 
enable  these  forces  to  reveal  themselves  at  their  highest  pitch, 
to  find  full  expression,  and  to  explode  in  a  divine  combustion. 

There  is  another  thing  to  be  said  about  Sarah  Bernhardt 's 
emancipation  from  the  l'lie.ttie  francais.  Had  she  nevei  been 
independent,  had  she  never  been  her  own  master  and  her  own 
stage  manager,  she  would  never  have  realised  for  u>  a  whole 


232  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

series  of  poetical  visions  and  pictures  which  have  had  a  deep 
and  lasting  influence  on  contemporary  art.  We  should  never 
have  seen  Theodora  walk  like  one  of  Burne- Jones's  dreams  come 
to  life  amidst  the  splendours  of  the  Byzantine  Court : 

"  Tenendo  un  giglio  tra  le  ceree  dita." 

We  should  never  have  seen  La  Princesse  Lointaine  crowned 
with  lilies,  sumptuous  and  sad,  like  one  of  Swinburne's  early 
poems  ;  nor  La  Samaritaine  evoke  the  spices,  the  fire,  and  the 
vehemence  of  the  Song  of  Solomon  ;  nor  Gismonda,  with 
chrysanthemums  in  her  hair,  amidst  the  jewelled  glow  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  against  the  background  of  the  Acropolis  ;  nor 
Iz&l  incarnating  the  soul  and  dreams  of  India.  Eliminate 
these  things  and  you  eliminate  one  of  the  sources  of  inspiration 
of  modern  art  ;  you  take  away  something  from  D'Annunzio's 
poetry,  from  Maeterlinck's  prose,  from  Moreau's  pictures ;  you 
destroy  one  of  the  mainsprings  of  Rostand's  work  ;  you  anni- 
hilate some  of  the  colours  of  modern  painting,  and  you  stifle 
some  of  the  notes  of  modern  music  ;  for  in  all  these  you 
can  trace  in  various  degrees  the  subtle,  unconscious  influence 
of  Sarah  Bernhardt. 

The  most  serious  break  in  the  appreciation  of  her  art,  on 
the  part  of  the  critics  and  the  French  public,  did  not  come 
about  immediately  after  she  left  the  Theatre  francais.  On  the 
contrary,  when  she  played  the  part  of  Adrienne  Lecouvreur 
for  the  first  time — this  was  in  May  1880 — in  London,  her 
triumph  among  the  critical  was  complete.  I  have  an  article 
by  Sarcey,  dated  31st  May  1880,  in  which  he  raves  about  the 
performance  he  had  come  to  London  to  see,  and  in  which 
he  says,  had  the  performance  taken  place  in  Paris,  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  audience  would  have  been  boundless.  The 
most  serious  break  in  the  appreciation  of  her  art  came  about 
after  she  had  been  to  America,  toured  round  Europe  many 
times,  with  a  repertory  of  stock  plays  and  an  indifferent  com- 
pany, and  acted  in  such  complete  rubbish  as  Lena,  the  adapta- 
tion of  As  in  a  Looking-Glass,  of  which  I  have  already  given  a 
schoolboy's  impressions.  People  then  began  to  say  they  were 
tired  of  her.  It  is  true  she  woke  up  the  public  once  more  with  her 
performance  of  La  Tosca  in  1889,  but  in  July  1889  Mr.  Walkley 
voiced  a  general  feeling  when  he  said :  "  I  suspect  she  her- 
self understands  the  risks  of  '  abounding  in  her  own  sense  ' 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  233 

quite  as  well  as  any  of  us  could  tell  her.  Slit-  knows  her  talent 
needs  refreshing,  revitalising,  rejuvenating."  He  speaks  of 
"  her  consciousness  of  a  need  for  a  larger,  saner,  more  varied 
repertory.  But,"  he  adds,  "she  will  never  get  that  repertciy 
so  long  as  she  goes  wandering  from  pole  to  pole,  with  a  new 
piece,  specially  constructed  for  her  by  M.  Sardou,  in  her  pocket." 

Fortunately  this  consciousness  of  a  need  for  a  newer,  saner 
repertory  took  effect  in  fact,  after  Sarah  Bernhardt  came  back 
from  a  prolonged  tour  in  South  America.  In  the  'nineties  she 
took  the  Renaissance  Theatre  in  Paris,  and  she  opened  hei 
season  with  a  delicate  and  serious  drama  called  Les  Rois,  by 
Jules  Lemaitre. 

I  am  not  sure  of  the  date  of  this  performance,  but  she 
played  Phidre  at  the  Renaissance  in  1893,  and  Lemaitre  said 
that  "  Jamais,  Madame  Sarah  Bernhardt,  ne  fut  plus  parfaite, 
ni  plus  puissante,  ni  plus  adorable."  She  produced  Sudennann's 
Magda  in  1896,  and  liusset's  Lorenzuccio  in  December  1896, 
and  then  she  discovered  Rostand,  whose  first  play,  Les  Roman- 
esques, had  been  done  at  the  Francais,  and  turned  him  into  the 
channel  of  serious  poetical  drama. 

She  then  built  a  theatre  for  herself,  and  gave  us  Rostand's 
Samaritaine,  Hamlet,  L'A  iglon,  and  a  series  of  Classical  matinees  ; 
and  from  that  time  onward  she  never  ceased  to  produce  at  least 
one  interesting  play  a  year.  That  was  a  fine  average,  a  high 
achievement,  and  a  real  service  to  art.  People  seldom  reflect 
that  it  is  necessary  for  managers  and  actors  to  fill  their  theatre, 
and  they  cannot  always  be  producing  interesting  experiments 
that  do  not  pay.  Small  blame,  therefore,  to  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
if  she  sometimes  fell  back  on  Sardou,  and  all  praise  and 
gratitude  is  due  to  her  for  the  daring  experiments  she  risked. 

Among  these  experiments  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  all  was  that  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  in  Le  Prods  de  Jeanne 
d' Arc  ;  another  was  as  Lucrezia  Borgia  in  Victor  Hugo's 
play;  and  a  third  the  hero  of  the  charming  poetical  play  Les 
Bouffons.  She  found  a  saner,  larger  repertory,  and  crowned 
her  career  by  triumphing  in  Athalie  in  1920. 

Some  French   critics  think  her  Lorenzuccio  was  the   finest 
of  her   parts.     Lemaitre   said   about   it:    "  File   n'a  pas  >eule- 
ment  joue\  comme  elle  sait  jouer,  son  role:  elle  l'a  comp 
Car  il  ne  s1  it  plus  ici  de  ces  dames  aux  camelu>,  et  de  ces 

princesses  lointaines,  fort  simples  dans  leur  fond,  et  qu'elle  a  su 


234  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

nous  rendre  ^mouvantes  et  belles,  presque  sans  reflexion  et 
rien  qu'en  dcoutant  son  sublime  instinct.  A  ce  genie  naturel 
de  la  diction  et  du  geste  expressifs,  elle  a  su  joindre  cette  fois, 
comme  lorsqu'elle  joue  Phedre  (mais  que  Lorenzaccio  etait  plus 
difficile  a  penetrer  !)  la  plus  rare  et  la  plus  subtile  intelligence." 

This  is  what  M.  J.  de  Tillet  wrote  about  the  performance  in 
the  Revue  Bleue  of  December  1896  : 

"  Cette  fois  c'a  ete  le  vrai  triomphe,  sans  restrictions  et  sans 
reserves.  Je  vous  ai  dit  la  semaine  derniere  qu'elle  avait  atteint, 
et  presque  depasse"  le  sommet  de  l'art.  Je  viens  de  relire 
Lorenzaccio,  et  c'a  ete  une  joie  nouvelle,  plus  rassise  et  plus  con- 
vaincue,  de  retrouver  et  d'evoquer  ses  intonations  et  ses  gestes. 
Elle  a  donne  la  vie  a  ce  personnage  de  Lorenzo,  que  personne 
n'avait  ose  aborder  avant  elle  ;  elle  a  maintenu,  a  travers  toute 
la  pi&ce,  ce  caractere  complexe  et  hesitant  ;  elle  en  a  rendu 
toutes  les  nuances  avec  une  verite  et  une  profondeur  singulieres. 
Admirable  d'un  bout  a  l'autre,  sans  procedds  et  sans '  deblayage,' 
sans  exces  et  sans  cris,  elle  nous  a  emus  jusqu'au  fond  de  lame, 
par  la  simplicity  et  la  justesse  de  sa  diction,  par  l'art  souverain 
des  attitudes  et  des  gestes.  Et,  j'insiste  sur  ce  point,  elle  a 
donne  au  role  tout  entier,  sans  faiblesse  et  sans  arret,  une  in- 
oubliable  physionomie.  Qu'elle  parle  ou  quelle  se  taise,  elle  est 
Lorenzaccio  des  pieds  a  la  tete,  corps  et  ame  ;  elle  '  vit  '  son 
personnage,  et  elle  le  fait  vivre  pour  nous.  Le  talent  de  Mme 
Sarah  Bernhardt  m'a  parfois  plus  inquiete  que  charme.  C'est 
une  raison  de  plus  pour  que  je  repete  aujourd'hui  qu'elle  a  atteint 
le  sublime.  Jamais,  je  n'ai  rien  vu,  au  theatre,  qui  egalat  ce 
qu'elle  a  donne"  dans  Lorenzaccio." 

In  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  collected  dramatic  criticism, 
Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays,  there  is  an  interesting  chapter 
comparing  the  two  artists  in  the  part  of  Magda,  in  which  he 
says  that  Duse's  performance  annihilated  that  of  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt for  him.  Let  us  assume,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that 
it  did  the  same  for  everyone.  I  saw  Sarah  Bernhardt  play  the 
part  superbly  in  Paris,  and  I  saw  Duse  play  the  part  superbly  in 
London,  and  I  should  have  said  that  Duse  lent  the  character  a 
nobility  and  a  dignity  that  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  text  of 
the  play,  and  that  Sarah  Bernhardt  made  of  Magda  what  the 
author  wanted  her  to  be  :  a  rather  noisy,  exuberant,  vulgar, 
successful  prima  donna,  a  cabotine,  not  without  genius,  and 
with   moments,    when    her   human   feelings   were  touched,   of 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  235 

greatness  ;   that  she  portrayed  the  ostentation  of  the  actr< 

and  the  sudden  intoxication  of  success  and  celebrity,  with 
their  attendant  disillusions,  on  a  talented  middle-class  German 
girl  ;  and,  when  the  note  called  for  it,  the  majesty  <>f  mother- 
hood, to  perfection  ;  but  let  us  assume  that  Duse  in  this  part 
gave  something  more  memorable,  and  the  pari  certainly  suited 
her  temperament,  her  irony,  her  dignity,  perhaps  better  than 
anyother,  and  gave  her  a  unique  opportunity  for  self-expression, 
even  at  the  1  ost  of  reality,  and  of  the  play.  Let  us  go  furthi  1 , 
and  say  that  in  Dumas'  La  Femnw  ie  Claude  Duse  played  the 
part  of  Cesarine,  a  Sarah  Bernhardt  pari  if  ever  there  was  one, 
the  part  of  a  wicked,  seductive  woman  ;  and  made  of  her 
creation  in  thai  pari  a  trembling,  quivering,  living,  vibrating 
thing  ;   an  unforgettable  study  of  vice  and  charm  and  deadly 

kedness  and  lure,  which  Sarah  Bernhardt  never  excelled. 
Even  if  we-  admit  all  'his,  the  fact  still  remains  that  Sarah 
Bernhardt  could  play  a  poetic  tragedy  in  a  fashion  beyond 
Duse's  reach  ;  that  she  could  play  Pheclre  and  Cleopatra  and 
Dofia  Sol  ;  and  that  Duse,  in  the  role  of  Cleopatra,  dwindled 
and  was  overwhelmed  by  it.  The  uiti<>  forgot,  when  they 
compared  the  two  artists,  the  glory  of  Sarah  Bernhardt 's  past, 
the  extent  of  range  of  her  present,  the  possibilities  of  her  future  ; 
her  interpretations  of  Racine,  of  Victor  Hugo;  her  under- 
standing of  poetry  and  verse  ;  they  did  not  compare  the  whole 
art  of  Duse  with  the  whole  art  of  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  had 
they  done  so  they  would  have  at  once  realised  the  absurdity  of 
doing  such  a  thing — an  absurdity  as  great  as  to  compare  Keats' 
poetry  \\  it  h  1  olstoy's  novels,  or  Burne- Jones  with  George  Sand. 

The  French  critics  were  more  discriminating,  and  anyone 
who  has  the  curiosity  to  turn  up  what  Lemaitre  says  of  Duse  in 
La  Dame  aux  Camillas  will  find  a  subtle  and  discriminating 
1  ontrast  between  the  art  of  these  two  great  actresses.  Person- 
ally I  am  thankful  to  have  seen  them  both,  and  to  have 
thought  each  unapproachable  in  her  own  way. 

From  1893  to  1903  Sarah  Bernhardt 's  career  broadened  and 
shone  in  an  Indian  summer  of  maturity  and  glory,  and  it  was 
during  this  period  that  she  produced  themost  interesting  plays 
of  her  repertory,  and  it  was  certainly  during  this  period  that 
she  received  from  French  criticism  the  highe>t  meed  of  serious 
praise.  But  her  career  was  by  no  means  over  in  1903.  In  1920 
all  the  theatres  in  Paris  closed  one  day,  SO  that  all  the  actors 


236  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

of  Paris  might  see  her  play  in  Athalie ;  and  as  I  write  she  is 
still  producing  new  plays. 

In  what  did  the  magic,  the  secret  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  con- 
sist ?  The  mainsprings  of  her  life  and  her  career  were  indomit- 
able determination,  blent  with  a  fine  indifference  to  the  opinion 
of  the  crowd,  and  a  saving  sense  of  proportion  enabling  her  to 
keep  a  cool  head  and  a  just  estimate  of  worldly  fame  amidst  a 
tornado  of  praise,  and  sometimes  in  face  of  volleys  of  abuse. 
But  as  to  the  secret  of  her  art,  when  one  has  said  that  Sarah 
Bernhardt  worked  like  a  slave  until  she  attained  a  perfect 
mastery  over  the  means  at  her  disposal  ;  that  her  attitudes  and 
gestures  were  a  poem  in  themselves  ;  that  if  she  played  Ph6dre 
in  dumb-show  it  would  have  been  worth  while  going  to  see; 
and  that  if  she  played  Dona  Sol  in  the  dark  it  would  have  been 
worth  a  pilgrimage  to  hear — when  one  has  said  this,  one  has 
said  nearly  all  that  can  be  put  into  words,  and  one  has  said 
nothing  ;  one  has  left  out  the  most  important  part,  and  in 
fact  everything  that  matters,  because  one  has  omitted  her 
personality,  a  blend  of  gestures,  look,  voice,  movement,  in- 
tonation combined,  and  something  else,  the  charm,  the  witchery, 
the  spell  which  defy  analysis. 

When  as  Cleopatra  she  approached  Antony,  saying :  "  Je 
suis  la  reine  d'Egypte,"  the  fate  of  empires,  the  dominion  of 
the  world,  the  lordship  of  Rome,  could  have  no  chance  in  the 
balance  against  five  silver  words  and  a  smile,  and  we  thought 
that  the  world  would  be  well  lost  ;  and  we  envied  Antony  his 
ruin  and  his  doom. 

But  this  magic,  this  undefinable  charm,  is  a  thing  which  it 
is  useless  to  write  about.  One  must  state  its  existence,  and 
with  a  thought  of  pity  for  those  who  have  not  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  feeling  it,  and  still  more  for  those  who  are  unable  to 
feel  it,  pass  on.  There  is  no  more  to  be  said.  It  is  impossible, 
too,  to  define  the  peculiar  thrill  that  has  convulsed  an  audience 
when  Sarah  rose  to  an  inspired  height  of  passion.  When  the 
spark  fell  in  these  Heaven-sent  moments,  she  seemed  to  be 
carried  away,  and  to  carry  us  with  her  in  a  whirlwind  from  a 
crumbling  world.  It  is  fruitless  to  dwell  at  length  on  this 
theme,  but  I  will  recall  some  minor  occasions  on  which  the 
genius  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  worked  miracles. 

I  remember  one  such  occasion  in  the  autumn  of  1899.  The 
South  African  War  had  been  declared,  and  a  concert  was  being 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  237 

held  at  the  Ritz  Hotel  in  aid  of  the  British  wounded.  It  was  a 
raw  and  dark  November  afternoon.  In  the  drawing-room  of 
the  Ritz  Hotel  there  was  gathered  together  a  w<  11 -dressed  and 
singularly  uninspiring  crowd,  depressed  by  the  gloomy  news 
from  the  front,  and  suffering  from  anticipated  boredom  at  the 
thoughts  of  an  entertainment  in  the  afternoon.  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt walked  on  to  the  platform  dressed  in  furs,  and  prepared 
to  recite  "La  Chanson  d'Eviradnus,"  by  Victor  Hugo,  and  an 
accompanist  sat  down  before  the  piano  to  accompany  the  recita- 
tion with  music.  I  remember  my  heart  sinking.  I  felt  that 
a  recitation  to  music  of  a  love-song  in  that  Ritz  drawing-room 
on  that  dark  afternoon,  before  a  decorous,  dispirited  crowd, 
mostly  stolid  Britishers,  was  inappropriate  ;  I  wished  the  whole 
entertainment  would  vanish  ;  I  felt  uncomfortable  and  I  pit i-  d 
Sarah  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  Then  Sarah  opened  her 
lips  and  began  to  speak  the  wonderful  lyric  (I  quote  for  the 
pleasure  of  writing  the  words)  : 

"  Si  tu  veux  faisons  un  rSve, 
Montons  sur  deux  palefrois  ; 
I  u  m'emmenes,  je  t'enleve, 
L'oiseau  chante  dans  les  bois. 

Jc  suis  ton  maltre  et  ta  proie  ; 
l'.irtons,  c'e9t  la  fin  du  jour  ; 
lion  cheval  sera  la  joie; 
Ton  cheval  sera  l'amour." 

Ritz  and  the  well-dressed  crowd,  and  the  raw  November  air, 
and  the  gloom  of  the  war,  the  depression  and  the  discomfort  all 
disappeared. 

"  Nous  ferons  toucher  leurs  tfites  ; 
Les  voyages  sont  ais6s  ; 
Nous  donnerons  a  ces  betes 
Une  avoine  de  baisers. 

Viens  !    nos  doux  chevaux  mensonges 
I'rappcnt  du  pied  tous  ies  deux, 
I.c  mien  au  fond  des  songes 
I.t  lc  tien  au  fond  des  cieux. 

Un  bagage  est  n6cessairr  ; 
Nous  emporterons  nos  vaux. 
N<>s  bonheurs,  notro   niisere, 
Et  la  fleur  de  tes  cheveux." 

We  heard  the  champing  of  the  steeds  in  an  enchanted  forest, 


238  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

the  song  of  the  calling  bird,  and  the  laughter  of  adventurous 

lovers. 

'"  Viens,  le  soir  brunit  les  chenes, 
Le  moineau  rit ;   ce  moqueur 
Entend  le  doux  bruit  des  chaines 
Que  tu  m'as  mises  au  coeur. 

Ce  ne  sera  point  ma  faute 
Si  les  forets  et  les  monts, 
En  nous  voyons  cote  a  cote, 
Ne  murmurent  pas  :    Aimons  ! 

Viens,  sois  tendre,  je  suis  ivre. 
O  les  verts  taillis  mouilles  ! 
Ton  soufle  te  fera  suivre 
Des  papillons  reveilles." 

In  the  second  line  of  the  last  stanza  quoted  : 

"  O  les  verts  taillis  mouilles  !  " 

her  voice  suddenly  changed  its  key  and  passed,  as  it  were,  from 
a  minor  of  tenderness  to  an  abrupt  major  of  childlike  wonder  or 
delighted  awe  ;  it  half  broke  into  something  between  a  sob  of 
joy  and  a  tearful  smile  ;  we  saw  the  dew-drenched  grasses  and 
the  gleaming  thickets,  and  then  as  she  said  the  two  next  lines 
the  surprise  died  away  in  mystery  and  an  infinite  homage : 

"  Was  it  love  or  praise  ? 
Speech  half  asleep  or  song  half  awake  ?  " 

And  when  further  on  in  the  poem  she  said  : 

"  Allons  nous  en  par  1'Autriche  ! 
Nous  aurons  l'aube  a  nios  fronts  ; 
Je  serai  grand,  et  toi  riche, 
Puisque  nous  nous  aimerons," 

we  heard  the  call  of  youth,  the  soaring  of  first  love,  the  spirit 
of  adventure,  of  romance,  and  of  spring.  When  she  came  to 
the  last  stanza  of  all  : 

"  Tu  sera  dame,  et  moi  comte  ; 
Viens,  mon  cceur  s'epanouit, 
Viens,  nous  conterons  ce  conte 
Aux  etoiles  de  la  nuit," 

she  opened  wide  her  raised  arms,  and  one  could  have  sworn 
a  girl  of  eighteen,  "  April's  lady,"  was  calling  to  her  "  lord  in 
May." 

When  she  had  done,  a  great  many  people  in  the  audience 
were  crying  ;   the  applause  was  deafening,  and  she  had  to  say 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  239 

the  whole  poem  over  a  second  time,  which  she  did,  with  the 
same  effect  on  the  audience. 

Another  occasion  which  I  shall  never  forget  was  the  first 
night  that  she  played  Hamlet  in  Paris.  The  audience  was 
brilliant  and  hypercritical,  and  the  play  was  received  coldly 
until  the  first  scene  between  Polonius  and  Hamlet.  When 
Hamlet  answers  Polonius's  question  :  "  What  do  you  read, 
my  Lord  ?  "  with  his  "  Words,  words,  words,"  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt played  it  like  this.  (She  was  dressed  and  got  up  like 
the  pictures  of  young  Raphael,  with  a  fair  wig  ;  she  was  the 
soul  of  courtesy  in  the  part,  a  gentle  Prince.)  Hamlet  was 
lying  on  a  chair  reading  a  book.  The  first  "  des  mots  "  he  said 
with  an  absent-minded  indifference,  just  as  anyone  speaks 
when  interrupted  by  a  bore  ;  in  the  second  "  des  mots  "  his 
answer  seemed  to  catch  his  own  attention,  and  the  third 
"  des  mots  "  was  accompanied  by  a  look,  and  charged  with  an 
intense  but  fugitive  intention  :    something 

"  between  a  smile  and  a  smothered   sigh," 

with  a  break  in  the  intonation,  that  clearly  said  :  "  Yes,  it  is 
words,  words,  words,  and  all  books  and  everything  else  in 
life  and  in  the  whole  world  is  only  words,  words,  words." 
This  delicate  shadow,  this  adumbration  of  a  hint  was  in- 
stantly seized  by  the  audience  from  the  gallery  to  the  stalls ; 
and  the  whole  house  cried  :  "  Bravo  !  bravo  !  "  It  was  a  fine 
example  of  the  receptivity,  the  flair,  and  the  corporate  in- 
telligence of  a  good  French  audience. 

Personally  I  think  her  Hamlet  was  one  of  the  four  greatest 
achievements  of  her  career.  I  will  come  to  the  others  later. 
Excepting  Sir  Johnston  Forbes  Robertson's  Hamlet,  it  was 
the  only  intelligible  Hamlet  of  our  time.  One  great  point  of 
difference  between  this  Hamlet  and  that  of  any  other  actors 
1  have  seen  Is,  whereas  most  Hamlets  seem  isolated  from  the 
rest  of  the  players,  as  if  they  were  reciting  something  apart 
from  the  play  and  speaking  to  the  audience,  this  Hamlet  spoke 
to  the  other  persons  of  the  play,  shared  their  life,  their  external 
life,  however  wale  the  spiritual  gulf  might  be  between  them  and 
Hamlet.  This  Hamlet  was  in  Denmark  ;  not  in  splendid  isola- 
tion, cm  the  boards,  in  order  to  show  how  well  he  could  spout 

Shakespeare's  monologues,  01  that  lie  was  an  interesting  fellow. 
Another  point  :    her  Hamlet  is  the  only  one  I  have  seen  in 


240  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

which  there  was  real  continuity,  in  which  one  scene  seemed 
to  have  any  connection  with  the  preceding  scenes. 

She  had  already  shown  what  she  could  do  in  the  progression 
of  a  single  scene  by  crescendo,  diminuendo  transition,  and 
modulation,  in  the  dialogue  with  Ophelia — "  Get  thee  to  a 
nunnery."  The  transition  between  the  tenderness  of  "  Nymph, 
in  thy  orisons  be  all  my  sins  remembered,"  and  the  brutality 
of  "  I  have  heard  of  your  paintings  too,  well  enough,"  was 
made  plausible  by  Hamlet  catching  sight  of  the  King 
and  Polonius  in  the  arras — a  piece  of  business  recommended, 
I  think,  by  Coleridge  ;  but  the  naturalness  and  the  progression 
of  this  scene  were  a  marvel  ;  the  profound  gravity  and  bitter- 
ness with  which  she  spoke  the  words  :  "  I  am  myself  indifferent 
honest  :  but  I  could  accuse  me  of  such  things,  that  it  were 
better  my  mother  had  not  borne  me  :  I  am  very  proud,  revenge- 
ful, ambitious."  One  seemed  to  be  overhearing  Shakespeare 
himself  in  a  confessional  when  she  said  that  speech,  and  the 
cynicism  of  the  final  words  of  the  scene  were  whispered  and 
hissed  with  a  withering,  blighting  bitterness,  her  voice  sinking 
to  a  swift  whisper,  as  though  all  the  utterance  of  the  body 
has  been  exhausted,  and  these  words  were  the  cry  of  a  broken 
heart.  But  an  example  of  what  I  mean  by  the  continuity  of 
the  interpretation  is  when  the  play  within  the  play  is  finished, 
when  Hamlet  breaks  up  the  whole  entertainment  by  his  startling 
behaviour.  In  that  scene  Sarah  Bernhardt  was  like  a  tiger  ; 
her  glance  transfixed  and  pierced  through  the  King,  and 
towards  the  end  of  the  play  within  the  play  she  crept  across 
the  stage  and  climbed  up  on  to  the  high,  raised,  balconied  dais 
on  the  right  of  the  stage,  from  which  he  was  looking  on,  and 
stared  straight  into  his  face  with  the  accusing,  questioning 
challenge  of  an  avenging  angel.  But  the  point  I  want  to  make 
is  this  :  when  that  scene  is  over,  most  players  take  the  inter- 
view with  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern,  which  follows  im- 
mediately after  it,  as  though  nothing  had  happened.  Not 
so  Sarah  Bernhardt  ;  during  the  whole  of  this  interview  she 
played  in  a  manner  which  let  you  see  that  Hamlet  was  still 
trembling  with  excitement  from  what  had  happened  im- 
mediately before  ;  and  this  not  only  brought  out  the  irony 
and  the  point  of  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern's  flat  con- 
ventionality, but  gave  the  audience  the  sharp  sensation  that 
they  were  face  to  face  with  life  itself.     So  was  it  throughout 


SARAH  BERNHARDT  241 

her  Hamlet  ;  each  scene  depended  on  all  the  others  ;  and 
the  various  moods  of  the  Dane  succeeded  one  another,  like 
clouds  that  chased  one  another  but  belonged  to  one  sky, 
and  not  like  separate  slides  of  a  magic  lantern. 

The  fight  with  Laertes  was  terribly  natural  ;  the  business 
of  the  exchange  of  swords,  and  the  expression  in  Hamlet's 
eyes  when  he  realised,  and  showed  that  he  had  realised,  that 
one  of  the  swords  was  poisoned  and  now  in  his  hands,  which, 
in  the  hands  of  mediocre  players,  becomes  so  preposterously 
extravagant,  was  tremendous. 

The  whole  performance  was  natural,  easy,  life-like,  and 
princely,  and  perhaps  the  most  poignant  scene  of  all,  and  what 
is  the  most  poignant  scene  in  the  play,  if  it  is  well  played,  was 
the  conversation  with  Horatio,  just  before  the  final  duel  when 
Hamlet  says  :  "  If  it  be  not  to  come,  it  will  be  now."  Sarah 
charged  these  words  with  a  sense  of  doom,  with  the  set 
courage  that  faces  doom  and  with  the  underlying  certainty 
of  doom  in  spite  of  the  courage  that  is  there  to  meet  it.  It 
made  one's  blood  run  cold. 

Another  occasion  when  Sarah  Bernhardt 's  acting  seemed  to 
me  tremendous,  was  a  performance  of  La  Dame  aux  CamHias 
not  long  before  the  war.  I  had  seen  her  p  ay  the  part  dozens 
of  times,  and  during  a  space  of  twenty  years  both  in  Paris 
and  in  London.  She  was  not  well  ;  she  was  suffering  from 
rheumatism  ;  the  stage  had  to  be  marked  out  in  chalk  for  her, 
showing  where  she  could  stand  up.  She  was  too  unwell  to 
stand  up  for  more  than  certain  given  moments.  I  went  to 
see  her  with  a  Russian  actress  who  had  seen  her  play  in  St. 
Petersburg  or  Moscow,  and  not  been  able  to  endure  her  acting  ; 
she  had  seen  her  walk  through  a  part  before  an  indifferent 
audience  that  wondered  what  her  great  reputation  was  founded 
on.  We  arrived  late  after  the  second  act,  and  I  went  behind 
the  scenes  and  talked  to  Sarah,  and  told  her  of  this  Russian 
actress.  She  played  the  last  three  acts  in  so  moving  and 
simple  a  manner,  and  the  last  act  with  such  agonising  poignancy 
and  restive  that  not  only  was  my  Russian  friend  in  tear-, 
but  the  actors  on  the  stage  cried  so  much  that  their  tears  dis- 
coloured their  faces  and  made  runnels  in  their  grease  paint. 

As  we  went  away  my  Russian  friend  said  to  me  that  was 
the  finest  bit  of  acting  she  had  ever  seen  or  hoped  to  see  again. 
Another  time,   I  think  it  was  1896,  I  was   present    a1    a 
16 


242  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

performance  of  Magda  in  Paris  at  the  Renaissance  Theatre  by 
Sarah  :  in  her  own  phrase,  le  Dieu  etait  Id,  and  I  shall  never 
forget  the  thrill  that  passed  through  the  audience  when  Magda, 
at  the  thought  of  being  separated  from  her  child,  let  loose  her 
passion,  and  spoke  the  elemental  love  of  a  mother  defending 
her  child.  Here  the  advocatus  Diaboli  will  chuckle  and  say 
something  about  "  tearing  a  passion  to  pieces."  This  was  just 
what  it  was  not.  The  tirade  was  concentrated  and  subdued, 
and  it  culminated  in  a  whisper  which  had  the  vehemence  of  a 
whirlwind.  The  scene  was  interrupted  by  a  spontaneous  cry 
of  applause.  I  have  sometimes  heard  applause  like  this  before 
and  since,  when  Sarah  Bernhardt  has  been  acting,  but  I  have 
never  seen  the  art  of  any  other  actor  or  actress  provoke  so 
great  and  so  loud  a  cry. 

I  said  Sarah  Bernhardt 's  Hamlet  was  one  of  the  four  great 
achievements  of  her  career.  These  are  what  I  think  were  the 
others  : 

The  greatest  thing  an  actor  or  an  actress  can  do  is  to  create 
a  poet.  It  used  at  one  time  to  be  said  that  Sarah  Bernhardt 
had  failed  to  do  this.  Yet  the  only  really  remarkable  French 
dramatic  poet  of  modern  times,  whose  plays  really  moved  and 
held  the  public,  Edmond  Rostand,  was  a  creation  of  Sarah 
Bernhardt.  The  younger  generation  of  his  time,  and  some  men 
of  letters  in  France,  but  not  all  (Emile  Faguet  was  a  notable 
exception,  and  Jules  Lemaitre  writes  of  his  art  with  great  dis- 
crimination), used  to  despise  the  verse  of  Edmond  Rostand. 
But  whatever  anyone  can  say  about  the  literary  value  of  his 
work,  there  is  no  doubt  about  its  dramatic  value.  Rostand 
may  or  may  not  have  been  a  great  poet  or  even  a  great  artist 
in  verse,  but  that  he  was  a  great  poetical  dramatist  was  proved 
by  the  only  possible  test — that  of  the  rapturous  enthusiasm 
of  his  audience,  wherever  and  in  whatever  language  his  plays 
are  performed.  Since  Victor  Hugo,  he  is  the  one  writer  of  our 
time,  and  the  only  writer  in  this  century  in  the  whole  of  Europe, 
who  made  a  direct  and  successful  appeal  to  the  public,  to 
the  public  in  all  countries  where  his  plays  were  performed, 
and  stirred  and  delighted  them  to  the  depths  of  their  being 
through  the  medium  of  dramatic  poetry.  Surely  this  is  no 
mean  achievement  ;  besides  this,  even  among  French  critics, 
there  are  many  who  maintain  that  he  is  a  genuine  poet.  Well, 
Sarah  Bernhardt  i->  in  the  main  responsible  for  Rostand,  for 


SARAH   BERNHARDT  243 

had  there  been  no  Sarah  there  would  have  been  no  Princesse 
Lointaine,  and  no  Cyrano  (for  it  was  Coquelin's  delight  in  La 
Princesse  Lointaine  which  made  him  a-k  Rostand  for  a  play), 
no  Samaritaine,  and  no  L'Aiglon. 

This  is  onr  oi  the  achievements  of  Sarah  Bernhardt.  An- 
other ami  perhaps  a  more  important  achievement  \\a>  accom- 
plished before  this — her  resuscitation  of  Racine.  Let  everyone 
interested  in  this  question  get  M.  Emile  Faguet's  Propos  de 
Tlmitre.  M.  Faguet  shows  with  great  wealth  of  detail  and 
abundance  of  contemporary  evidence  that  in  the  'seventies, 
until  Sarah  Bernhardt  played  in  Andromaque  and  Phedre, 
Racine's  plays  were  thought  unsuited  for  dramatic  n  presenta- 
tion. Even  Sarcey  used  to  say  in  those  days  that  Racine  was 
not  un  homme  de  tJiedtre.  Sarah  Bernhardt  changed  all  thi>. 
She  revealed  the  beauties  of  Racine  to  her  contemporaries.  She 
put  new  life  into  his  plays,  and  by  her  incomparable  delivery 
she  showed  off,  as  no  one  else  can  hope  to  do,  the  various  and 
subtle  secrets  of  Racine's  verse. 

She  did  the  same  for  Victor  Hugo  when  she  played  Dona  Sol 
and  the  Queen  in  Ruy  Bias.  Theodore  de  Banville,  in  his 
Camies  Parisiens,  bays  there  could  never  be  another  Queen  in 
Ruy  Bias  like  Sarah,  and  that,  whenever  the  words  : 

Elk  avait  un  petit  diademe  en  denfcelle  d'argent  " 

arespoki-n,  the  vision  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  will  rise,  as  though  it 
were  that  of  a  real  person,  frail,  slender,  with  a  small  crown 
set  in  her  wonderful  hair. 

Yet,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  Sarah  Bernhardt 's  supreme 
achievement  is  another  and  a  fourth  :  her  Phedre.  I  do  not 
think  that  anyone  will  disagree  with  this.  It  was  in  Phedre 
that  she  gave  the  maximum  of  beauty,  and  exhibited  the  whole 
range  of  her  highest  artistic  qualities.  In  Phidre  her  movements 
and  her  gestures,  her  explosions  of  fury  and  her  outbursts  of 
passion,  were  subservient  to  a  commanding  rhythm  ;  from  the 
moment  Phedre  walked  on  to  the  stage  trembling  under  the 
load  of  her  unconfessed  passion  until  the  moment  she  descended 
into  Hades,  par  un  chemin  plus  lent,  the  spectator  witnessed 
the  building  up  of  a  miraculous  piece  of  architecture,  in  time 
and  not  in  space;  and  followed  the  progressions,  the  rise,  the 
crisis,  and  the  tranquil  close  of  a  mysterious  symphony.  More- 
over, a  window  was  opened  for  him  wide  on  to  the  enchanted 


244  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

land  :  the  realm  of  beauty  in  which  there  are  no  conflicts  of 
times  and  fashions,  but  in  which  all  who  bear  the  torch  have 
an  equal  inheritance.  He  saw  a  woman  speaking  the  precise, 
stately,  and  musical  language  of  the  court  of  Louis  xiv.,  who, 
by  her  utterance,  the  plastic  beauty  of  her  attitudes,  and  the 
rhythm  of  her  movements,  opened  the  gates  of  time,  and  beyond 
the  veil  of  the  seventeenth  century  evoked  the  vision  of  ancient 
Greece.  Or,  rather,  time  was  annihilated,  seventeenth-century 
France  and  ancient  Greece,  Versailles  and  Tr^zene,  were  merged 
into  one  ;  he  was  face  to  face  with  involuntary  passion  and  the 
unequal  struggle  between  it  and  reluctant  conscience. 

There  was  the  unwilling  prey  of  the  goddess,  "  a  lily  on  her 
brow  with  anguish  moist  and  fever  dew  "  ;  but  at  the  sound 
of  her  voice  and  the  music  of  her  grief,  perhaps  we  forgot  all 
this,  perhaps  we  forgot  the  ancient  tales  of  Greece,  and  Crete, 
we  forgot  Racine  and  Versailles  ;  perhaps  we  thought  only  of  the 
woman  that  was  there  before  us,  who  surely  was  something  more 
than  human  :  was  it  she  who  plied  the  golden  loom  in  the 
island  of  iEaea  and  made  Ulysses  swerve  in  mid-ocean  from  his 
goal  ?  Or  she  who  sailed  down  the  Cydnus  and  revelled  with 
Mark  Antony  ?  Or  she  for  whom  Geoffroy  Rudel  sailed  to  Tri- 
poli, and  sang  and  died  ?  Or  she  who  haunted  the  vision  but 
baffled  the  pencil  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  ?  Or  she  who  excelled 
"  all  women  in  the  magic  of  her  locks,"  and  beckoned  to  Faust 
on  the  Brocken  ?  She  was  something  of  all  these  things,  an 
incarnation  of  the  spirit  that,  in  all  times  and  in  all  countries, 
whether  she  be  called  Lilith  or  Lamia  or  La  Gioconda,  in  the 
semblance  of  a  "  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci,"  bewitches  the  heart 
and  binds  the  brain  of  man  with  a  spell,  and  makes  the  world 
seem  a  dark  and  empty  place  without  her,  and  Death  for  her 
sake  and  in  her  sight  a  joyous  thing. 

So  used  we  to  dream  when  we  saw  those  harmonious  gestures 
and  heard  that  matchless  utterance.  Then  the  curtain  fell, 
and  we  remembered  that  it  was  only  a  play,  and  that  even 
Sarah  Bernhardt  must  "  fare  as  other  Empresses,"  and  "  wane 
with  enforc'd  and  necessary  change." 

Nevertheless,  we  give  thanks — we  that  have  lived  in  her  day ; 
for,  whatever  the  future  may  bring,  there  will  never  be  another 
Sarah  Bernhardt  : 

"  Yea,  they  shall  say,  earth's  womb  has  borne  in  vain 
New  things,  and  never  this  best  thing  again." 


CHAPTER    XIII 
HOME 

1  ARRIVED  in  Rome,  after  staying  a  few  days  on  the  way 
in  London  and  in  Florence.  In  the  Drury  Lane  Panto- 
mime that  year,  I  think  it  was  Mother  Goose,  Dan 
Leno  played  a  harp  solo,  which  I  think  is  the  funniest  thing 
I  ever  saw  on  the  stage.  He  had  a  subtle,  early  Victorian, 
Byronic  way  of  playing,  refined  and  panic-stricken,  and  he 
played  with  a  keepsake  expression,  and  with  sensibility,  as 
though  he  might  suddenly  have  the  vapours  ;  he  became 
confused  and  entangled  with  the  pedals,  and  at  one  moment 
the  harp — and  it  was  a  gigantic  harp — fell  right  on  to  him. 

Rome  in  January  was  warm  ;  one  seldom  needed  more 
than  a  small  wood  fire.  I  had  rooms  at  the  Embassy  at  the 
Porta  Pia.  The  Embassy  garden  is  just  within  the  old  walls 
and  is  a  trap  of  sun  and  beauty.  The  Ambassador  was  Lord 
Currie.  Lady  Currie,  his  wife,  was  Violet  Fane,  the  authoress 
of  Edwin  and  Angelina,  and  of  a  most  amusing  novel  called 
Sophy,  or  the  Adventures  of  a  Savage,  as  well  as  of  many  books 
of  poems. 

The  First  Secretary  was  Rennell  Rodd.  Lord  Currie  was 
not  well,  but  he  entertained  a  great  deal. 

Shortly  after  I  arrived,  Madame  Ristori  celebrated  her 
eightieth  or  her  eighty-fifth  birthday,  and  the  Ambassador 
asked  me  to  write  her  a  letter  of  congratulation  in  French.  I 
did  it,  and  at  the  end  I  said  that  Lord  Currie  hoped  to  be  able 
to  send  her  birthday  greetings  for  many  more  years  to  come. 
I  forget  the  exact  phrase,  but  I  know  the  words  de  tongues 
annies  occurred,  and  Lord  Currie  said  to  me :  'Don't  you 
think  it  is  perhaps  a  little  excessive  to  talk  of  de  tongues 
annees  to  a  lady  of  eighty  ?  "  The  expression  was  slightly 
toned  down. 

A  few  day-  later  Mrs.  Crawshay  took  me  to  see  Madame 

'4S 


246  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Ristori.  She  was  a  stately  old  lady  with  white  hair  and  a 
beautiful  voice,  and  I  imagine  Mrs.  Siddons  must  have  been 
rather  the  same  kind  of  person.  She  talked  of  D'Annunzio 
making  a  dramatic  version  of  Paolo  and  Francesca  ;  whether 
he  had  done  so  then  or  not,  or  whether  he  had  only  announced 
his  intention  of  doing  so,  I  forget.  In  any  case  Madame  Ristori 
disapproved  of  the  idea.  She  said  Dante  had  said  all  there 
was  to  say,  and  then  she  repeated  the  six  crucial  lines  from 
the  Inferno  about  the  disiato  riso,  and  I  never  heard  a  more 
melodious  human  utterance. 

Talking  of  some  other  poetical  play,  she  asked  whether  it  was 
a  tragedy  or  not.  As  we  seemed  to  hesitate,  she  said  :  "  If  it's 
in  five  acts,  it's  a  tragedy ;  if  it's  in  four  acts,  it's  a  drama." 

The  beauty  of  Rome  pierced  me  like  an  arrow  the  first  day 
I  spent  there.  On  my  first  afternoon  I  drove  to  St.  Peter's, 
the  Coliseum,  the  Pincio,  and  the  Protestant  cemetery,  where 
Shelley  and  Keats  are  buried.  I  was  not  disappointed.  A  few 
days  later  I  drove  along  the  Appian  Way  into  the  Campagna. 
It  was  a  grey  day,  with  a  slight  silver  fringe  on  the  blue  hills, 
and  alone  in  the  desolate  majesty  of  the  plain,  a  shepherd  tootled 
a  melancholy  tune  on  the  flute,  as  sad  as  the  shepherd's  tune  in 
the  third  act  of  Tristan  und  Isolda.  As  we  drove  back,  St. 
Peter's  shone  in  a  gleam  of  watery  light,  and  I  felt  that  I  had 
now  seen  Rome. 

It  was  a  pleasant  Embassy  to  serve  at.  Diplomatic  life 
was  different  at  Rome  either  from  life  in  Paris  or  Copenhagen. 
Society  consisted  of  a  number  of  small  and  separate  circles 
that  revolved  independently  of  each  other,  but  in  which  the 
members  of  one  circle  knew  what  the  members  of  all  the 
other  circles  were  doing.  The  diplomats,  and  there  were  a 
great  number  of  them,  were  most  of  them  an  integral  part  of 
Roman  society,  and  there  were  also  many  literary  and  artistic 
people  whose  circles  formed  part  of  the  same  system  as  that  of 
the  Romans  and  of  the  diplomatic  world. 

Lady  Currie  lived  in  a  world  of  her  own.  She  seemed  to 
look  on  at  the  rest  of  the  world  from  a  detached  and  separate 
observation  post,  from  which  she  quietly  noted  and  enjoyed 
the  doings  of  others  with  infinite  humour  and  serious  eyes. 

She  had  a  quiet,  plaintive,  half-deprecating  way  of  saying 
the  slyest  and  sometimes  the  most  enormous  things.  She  left 
it  to  you  to  take  them  or  leave  them  as  you  chose.     One  day 


ROME  247 

in  the  Embassy  garden  the  servants  had  surrounded  a  scorpion 
with  a  ring  of  fire  to  see  whether,  as  the  legend  says,  it  would 
stab  itself  to  death.  "  Leave  the  poor  salamander  alone,"  ^aid 
Lady  Currie  ;  "  it's  not  its  fault  that  it  is  a  salamander.  If  it 
had  its  way  it  might  have  been  an  .   .   .  ambassador." 

To  have  luncheon  or  dinner  alone  with  her  and  Lord  Currie 
was  one  of  the  most  enjoyable  entertainments  in  the  world, 
when  she  would  talk  in  the  most  unrestrained  manner,  and 
with  gentle  flashes  of  the  slyest,  the  must  running  wit,  and  a 
deliriously  funny  seemingly  careless  but  carefully  chosen 
felicity  of  phrase. 

She  used  to  describe  her  extraordinary  childhood  and  up- 
bringing, which  is  depicted  in  The  Adventures  of  Sophy,  and 
her  early  adventures  in  London  ;  and  when  she  said  any- 
thing particularly  funny,  she  looked  as  if  she  was  quite  uncon- 
scious of  the  meaning  of  what  she  had  said,  as  if  it  had  been 
an  accident.  She  was  fond  of  poetry  and  used  to  read  it  aloud 
beautifully.  She  was  equally  fond  of  her  dogs,  and  she  made 
splendid  use  of  them  as  a  weapon  against  bores  ;  by  bringing 
them  into  the  conversation,  making  them  the  subject  of  mock- 
serious  and  sentimental  rhapsodies,  dialogues,  monologues,  and 
dramas,  and  Just  when  the  stranger  would  be  thinking,  "  What 
a  silly  woman  this  is,"  there  would  be  a  harmless  phrase,  perhaps 
only  one  innocent  word,  which  just  gave  that  person  a  tiny 
qualm  of  doubt  as  to  whether  perhaps  she  was  so  silly  after  all. 
Once  when  she  was  travelling  to  London  at  the  time  the  re- 
strictions against  bringing  dogs  into  England  were  first  applied, 
she  tried  to  smuggle  her  dog  away  without  declaring  its  presence. 
The  dog  was  detected,  and  there  was  some  official  who  played 
a  part  in  this  story  and  in  taking  away  her  dog,  whom  Lady 
Currie  s  rid  she  would  never  forget.  Lady  Currie  had  a  Turkish 
maid  who  had  told  her  of  a  Turkish  curse  which,  if  spoken  at 
an  open  window,  had  an  unpleasant  effect  on  the  person  against 
whom  you  directed  it.  She  directed  the  curse  against  the  man 
whom  she  considered  to  be  responsible  for  depriving  her  of  the 
dog.  The  next  morning  she  was  surprised  and  not  a  little 
startled  to  read  in  the  Times  the  death  of  this  public  official. 
She  told  me  this  story  in  London  in  1904. 

I  went  on  with  my  Russian  lessons  in  Rome,  and  I  got 
to  know  a  good  many  Russians,  among  others  M.  and  Mmc 
Sazonoff,  Princess  Bariatinsky,  and  her  two  daughters,  and  a 


24S  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

brilliant  old  lady  called    Princess   Ourousoff,  who  lived  in  a 
little  flat  and  received  almost  every  evening. 

Princess  Ourousoff  had  known  Tolstoy  and  been  an  intimate 
friend  of  Tourgenev.  She  was  immensely  kind  to  me  and 
contributed  greatly  to  my  education  in  Russian  literature. 
She  read  me  poems  by  Pushkin  and  introduced  me  to  the  prose 
and  verse  of  many  other  Russian  authors.  Herr  Jagow  was  at 
the  German  Embassy  at  this  time,  and  he,  too,  was  a  friend  of 
Princess  Ourousoff's.  So  there  were  at  Rome  at  this  time  two 
future  Ministers  of  Foreign  Affairs,  both  of  whom  were  destined 
to  play  a  part  in  the  war  :  Herr  Jagow  and  M.  Sazonoff. 

Among  the  Italians,  my  greatest  friends  were  Count  and 
Countess  Pasolini,  who  had  charming  rooms  in  the  Palazzo 
Sciarra.  Count  Pasolini  was  an  historian  and  the  author  of 
a  large,  serious,  and  valuable  work  on  Catherina  Sforza.  His 
ways  and  his  conversation  reminded  me  of  Hamlet.  His 
dignity  and  his  high  courtesy  were  mixed  with  the  most  impish 
humour,  and  sometimes  he  would  glide  from  the  room  like  a 
ghost,  or  suddenly  expose  some  curious  train  of  thought  quite 
unconnected  with  the  conversation  that  was  going  on  round 
him.  Sometimes  he  would  be  unconscious  of  the  numerous 
guests  in  the  room,  which  was  nearly  always  full  of  visitors 
from  every  part  of  Europe ;  or  he  would  startle  a  stranger 
by  asking  him  what  he  thought  of  Countess  Pasolini,  or,  if  the 
conversation  bored  him,  hum  to  himself  a  snatch  of  Dante. 
Sometimes  he  would  be  as  naughty  as  a  child,  especially  if  he 
knew  he  was  expected  to  be  especially  good,  or  he  would  say 
a  bitingly  ironical  thing  masked  with  deference. 

One  day  an  Austrian  lady  came  to  luncheon  who  had  rather 
a  strange  appearance  and  still  stranger  clothes.  Her  hair  was 
remarkable  for  its  high  lights,  her  cheeks  and  eyebrows  for  their 
frank,  undisguised  artificiality.  When  the  lift  porter  saw  her 
he  was  puzzled.  Her  costume  enhanced  the  singularity  of  her 
appearance,  as  she  was  dressed  in  pale  green,  with  mermaid- 
like effects,  and  details  of  shells  and  seaweed.  When  she  was 
ushered  into  the  drawing-room,  Pasolini  gazed  at  her  with 
delighted  wonder,  concealing  his  amazement  with  a  veil  of 
mock  admiration,  quite  sufficiently  to  hide  it  from  her,  but 
not  well  enough  to  conceal  it  from  those  who  knew  him  in- 
timately. She  sat  next  to  him  at  luncheon,  and  he  was  as 
charming  and  deferential  as  it  was  possible  to  be  ;    but  those 


ROME  249 

who  knew  him  well  saw  that  he  was  taking  a  cynical  enjoy- 
ment in  every  moment  of  the  conversation.  When  she  went 
away  he  bowed  low,  kissed  her  hand,  and  said  :  "  Madame,  je 
t.icherai  de  vous  oublier." 

Count  Pasolini  sometimes  used  to  remind  me  of  the  fan- 
tastic, charming,  cultivated,  slightly  eccentric  people  that 
Anatole  France  sometimes  allows  to  wander  and  discourse 
through  his  stories,  especially  in  his  early  books.  Those  who 
knew  him  used  often  to  say  if  only  he  could  meet  Anatole 
France,  and  if  only  Anatole  France  could  meet  him.  When 
the  meeting  did  come  off,  at  a  dinner-party,  the  result  was  not 
quite  successful.  Count  Pasolini  knew  what  was  expected  of 
him,  and  looking  at  Anatole  France,  who  was  sitting  on  the 
other  side  of  the  table,  he  said  to  his  neighbour  in  an  audible 
whisper  :   "  Qui  est  ce  Monsieur  un  peu  chauve  ?  " 

One  day  I  took  an  English  lady  to  tea  with  him,  and  he  was 
so  enchanted  with  her  beauty  and  wit  that  he  said  he  mn>t  have 
a  souvenir  of  her,  and  quite  suddenly  he  cut  off  a  lock  of  her 
hair  wit li  a  pair  of  scissors  ;  and  this  lock  ho  kept  in  his  museum, 
and  he  showed  it  to  me  years  afterwards.  His  eyes  were  re- 
markable, they  were  so  thoughtful,  so  wistful,  so  deep,  so 
piercing,  and  so  melancholy  ;  and  sometimes  you  felt  he  was 
not  there  at  all,  but  on  some  other  plane,  pursuing  a  fantasy,  or 
chasing  a  dream  or  a  thought,  and  all  at  once  he  would  gently 
let  you  into  the  secret  of  his  day-dream  by  a  sudden  question 
or  an  unexpected  quotation.  At  other  times  he  would  join 
hotly  in  the  fray  of  conversation  ;  dispute,  argue,  pour  out 
fantastic  monologues,  and  embroider  absurd  themes. 

But  whatever  he  said  or  did,  in  whatever  mood  he  was, 
whether  wistful,  combative,  naughty,  perverse,  lyrical,  or 
fantastic,  he  never  lost  his  silvery  courtesy,  his  melancholy 
dignity.  When  I  said  he  was  like  Hamlet,  I  can  imagine  him 
so  well  looking  at  a  skull  and  saying  :  '  Prithee,  Horatio, 
tell  me  one  thing.  Dost  think  Alexander  looked  o'  this  fashion 
i'  th«-  earth  ?  '  That  is  just  the  kind  of  remark  he  would 
suddenly  make  in  the  middle  <>f  a  dinner-party.  His  thoughts 
and  hi-  dreams  flitted  about  him  like  dragon-flies,  and  he  some- 
time- caught  them  for  you  and  let  you  have  a  fugitive  glimpse  of 
their  shining  wings. 

At  Rome  I  got  to  know  Brewster  very  well.  He  lived  in 
the    Palazzo  Antici   Mattei,   and   he  often  gave  luncheon   and 


250  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

dinner-parties.  I  often  dined  with  him  when  he  was  alone. 
His  external  attitude  was  one  of  unruffled  serenity  and 
Olympian  impartiality,  but  I  often  used  to  tell  him  that  this 
mask  of  suavity  concealed  opinions  and  prejudices  as  absolute 
as  those  of  Dr.  Johnson.  His  opinions  and  tastes  were  his  own, 
and  his  appreciations  were  as  sensitive  as  his  expression  of 
them  was  original.  He  had  the  serene,  rarefied,  smiling  melan- 
choly of  great  wisdom,  without  a  trace  of  bitterness.  He  took 
people  as  they  were,  and  had  no  wish  to  change  or  reform  them. 
He  was  catholic  in  his  taste  for  people,  and  liked  those  with 
whom  he  could  be  comfortable.  He  was  appreciative  of  the 
work  of  others  when  he  liked  it,  a  discriminating  and  inspiriting 
critic.  While  I  was  in  Rome,  he  published  his  French  book, 
L'Ame  paienne  ;  but  his  most  characteristic  book  is  probably 
The  Prison.  Some  day  I  feel  sure  that  book  will  be  republished, 
and  perhaps  find  many  readers  ;  it  is  like  a  quiet  tower  hidden 
in  the  side  street  of  a  loud  city,  that  few  people  hear  of,  and  many 
pass  by  without  noticing,  but  which  those  who  visit  find  to  be 
a  place  of  peace,  haunted  by  echoes,  and  looking  out  on  sights 
that  have  a  quality  and  price  above  and  beyond  those  of  the 
market-place. 

Besides  The  Prison,  Brewster  wrote  two  other  books  in 
English,  and  a  play  in  French  verse,  which  he  had  not  finished 
correcting  when  he  died. 

Few  people  had  heard  of  his  books.  He  used  never  to 
complain  of  this.  He  once  told  me  that  his  work  lay  in  a 
narrow  and  arid  groove,  that  of  metaphysical  speculation,  in 
which  necessarily  but  few  people  were  interested.  He  talked 
of  it  as  a  narrow  strip  of  stiff  ploughland  on  which  just  a  few 
people  laboured.  He  said  he  would  have  far  preferred  a  different 
soil,  and  a  more  fruitful  form  of  labour,  but  that  happened  to 
be  the  only  work  he  could  do,  the  soil  which  had  been  allotted 
him.  He  was  Latin  by  taste,  tradition,  and  education  ;  a  lover 
of  Rabelais,  Montaigne,  Ronsard,  and  Villon,  but  seventeenth 
century  French  classics  bored  him.  He  disputed  the  idea  that 
French  was  necessarily  a  languagewhich  necessitated  perspicuity 
of  expression  and  clearness  of  thought.  He  thought  that  in 
the  hands  of  a  poet  like  Verlaine  the  French  language  could 
achieve  all  possible  effects  of  vagueness,  of  shades  of  feeling, 
of  overtones  in  ideas  and  in  expression.  He  admired  Dante, 
Goethe,   Byron,  and   Keats,  but  not   Milton,  Wordsworth,  or 


ROME  251 

Shelley.  He  disliked  Wagner's  music  intensely.  It  had,  he 
said,  the  same  effect  on  him  as  the  noise  of  a  finger  rubbed 
round  the  edge  of  a  piece  of  glass,  and  he  said  that  he  could 
gauge  from  the  intensity  of  his  dislike  how  keen  the  enjoy- 
ment of  those  who  did  enjoy  it  must  be. 

In  1906,  discussing  the  revolutionary  troubles  of  Russi;i,  lie 
said  to  me  :  "  All  Europe  seems  bent  on  proving  that  Liberty 
is  the  tyranny  of  the  rabble.  The  equation  may  work  itself 
out  more  or  less  quickly,  but  it  is  bound  to  triumph."  And 
again  :  "  As  the  intelligent  are  liberals,  I  am  on  the  side  of  the 
idiots."  And  in  Rome  he  often  used  to  say  to  me  that  the 
fanaticism  of  free-thinkers  and  the  intolerance  of  anti-clericals 
was  to  him  not  only  more  distasteful  than  the  dogmatism  of  the 
orthodox,  but  appeared  to  him  to  be  a  more  violent  and  a  more 
tyrannous  thing. 

This  description  (in  a  letter  written  in  1903)  of  how  he 
discovered  Verlaine's  poetry  is  extremely  characteristic  : 

"  In  1870  or  '71  I  found  in  the  gaieties  of  the  Odeon  a 
little  plaquette — a  few  rough  pages  of  verse.  Nobody  that 
knew  had  ever  heard  of  the  author,  and  it  was  years  before  I 
siw  hi s  name  mentioned  in  the  Press,  or  heard  him  talked  of. 
But  I  had  stored  the  name  in  my  memory  as  that  of  a  great 
poet.  It  was  Verlaine.  .  .  .  Perhaps  Verlaine's  friends  told 
him  that  his  verse  was  doubtless  pretty,  but  that  he  had  betto- 
write  plays  for  the  Gymnase.  Certainly  they  never  made  hin. 
rich,  and  it  is  a  chance,  a  mere  chance,  that  he  did  not  die 
unknown.  If  he  had,  it  wouldn't  have  harmed  him.  He  had 
touched  his  full  salary  the  moment  he  wrote  them.  I  don't 
believe  garlands  ever  fall  on  the  poet's  head.  They  collect 
round  the  neck  of  his  ghost  which  stands  in  front  of  him,  or 
behind.  And  the  ghost  bows  and  smiles  or  struts,  and  it  is 
all  so  Indifferent  and  so  far-off  to  the  other  fellow,  who  sits, 
like  Verlaine,  strumming  rhythms  on  the  table  of  a  diitv 
little  cafe." 

He  believed  in  treating  Shakespeare's  plays  like  opera,  and 
paving  the  greatest  importance  to  the  bravura  passages.  He 
deplored  Shakespeare  being  the  victim  of  pedants  and  a  national 
institution.  He  saw  in  Shakespeare  the  Renaissance  poet  and 
nothing  else.  He  thought  that  any  kind  of  realism  was  as  out 
of  place  in  Shakespeare  as  in  the  libretto  of  an  opera  ;  that 
dramatic  poems  were  not   plausible  things,  nor  exhibitions  of 


252  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

real  people,  and  that  bravura  passages,  however  absurd  their 
occurrence  in  a  particular  context,  looked  at  from  the  point 
of  view  of  reality,  were  not  only  legitimate,  but  came  with 
authority  if  considered  as  lovely  arias,  duets,  or  concerted 
pieces. 

This  view  of  the  production  of  Shakespeare  is  now  widely 
held,  though  unfortunately  it  is  seldom  practised  ;  managers 
and  players  still  try  to  make  Shakespeare  realistic,  and  too 
often  succeed  in  smothering  his  plays  with  scenery,  business, 
and  acting. 

The  most  refreshing  thing  about  Brewster  was  that  he  was 
altogether  without  that  exaggerated  reverence  for  culture  in 
general  and  books  in  particular  that  sometimes  hampers  his 
countrymen  (he  was  an  American)  when  they  have  been  trans- 
planted early  into  Europe  and  brought  up  in  France,  Italy,  or 
England,  and  saturated  with  art  and  literature.  He  liked 
books  ;  he  enjoyed  plays,  poetry,  and  certain  kinds  of  music  ; 
but  he  didn't  think  these  things  were  a  matter  of  life  and  death. 
He  enjoyed  them  as  factors  in  life,  an  adjunct,  an  accompani- 
ment, an  interlude,  just  as  he  enjoyed  a  fine  day  ;  but  he  was 
never  solemn  and  never  pompous,  and  he  knew  how  much  and 
how  little  things  mattered.  He  liked  people  for  what  they 
were,  and  not  for  what  they  did,  or  for  what  they  achieved. 
The  important  thing  in  his  eyes  was  not  the  quantity  of  achieve- 
ment, or  the  amount  of  effort,  but  the  quality  of  the  life  lived. 
With  such  ideas  he  was  as  detached  from  the  modern  world  as  a 
Chinese  poet  or  sage,  not  from  the  modern  world,  but  rather 
from  the  world,  for  to  the  human  beings  who  lived  in  it  there 
never  can  have  been  a  moment  when  the  world  was  not 
modern,  even  in  the  Stone  Age ;  and  in  the  game  of  life  he 
strove  for  no  prize ;  the  game  itself  was  to  him  its  own 
reward. 

In  The  Prison  he  writes  :  "  There  is  a  greater  reward  than 
any  which  the  teachers  can  warrant  ;  they  might  teach  you  to 
lead  a  decorous  life,  help  you  to  learn  the  rules  of  the  game,  show 
you  how  to  succeed  in  it.  But  the  profit  of  the  game  itself, 
that  which  makes  it  worth  playing  at  all,  even  to  those  who 
succeed  best,  this  they  can  neither  grant  nor  refuse  ;  you  bear 
it  in  yourselves,  inalienably,  whether  you  succeed  or  fail." 

I  imagine  that  a  man  like  Dr.  Johnson  might  have  said 
severe  things  about   him,   and    I   once    heard   a   critic    (who 


ROME  233 

admired  and  appreciated  him)  say  it  was  a  pity  Biewster  was 
such  an  idle  and  ignorant  man.  But  his  ignorance  was  more 
suggestive  than  the  knowledge  of  others,  for  he  ignored  not 
what  he  was  unable  to  learn,  but  what  he  had  no  wish  to  learn, 
and  his  idleness  was  a  benefit  to  others  as  well  as  to  himself  : 
a  fertile  oasis  in  an  arid  country.  His  mind  had  the  message 
of  the  flowers  that  need  neither  to  toil  nor  to  spin. 

In  February  1902  Pope  Leo  the  Thirteenth  celebrated  his 
jubilee.  I  heard  him  officiate  at  Mass  at  the  Sixtine  Chapel, 
and  I  also  went — although  I  forget  if  this  was  later  or  not — 
to  High  Mass  at  St.  Peter's,  when  the  Pope  was  carried  in  on  his 
chair  and  blessed  the  crowd.  I  had  a  place  under  the  dome. 
At  the  elevation  of  the  Host  the  Papal  Guard  went  down  on 
one  knee,  and  their  halberds  struck  the  marble  floor  with  one 
sharp,  thunderous  rap,  and  presently  the  silver  trumpets  rang 
out  in  the  dome.  At  that  moment  I  looked  up  and  my  eye 
caught  the  inscription,  written  in  large  letters  all  round  it  : 
"  Tu  es  Petrus,"  and  I  reflected  the  prophecy  had  certainly 
received  a  most  substantial  and  concrete  fulfilment.  Not  that 
at  that  time  I  felt  any  sympathy  with  the  Catholic  Church  ; 
indeed,  it  might  not  have  existed  for  me  at  Rome  at  that  time. 
I  thought,  too,  that  the  English  Catholic  inhabitants  of  Rome 
were  on  the  look  out  for  converts,  and  were  busy  casting  their 
nets.  Of  this,  however,  I  saw  no  trace,  although  I  met  several 
of  them  at  various  times. 

But  that  ceremony  in  St.  Peter's  would  have  impressed  any- 
one. Ami  when  the  Pope  was  carried  through  St.  Peter's,  with 
his  cortege  of  fan-bearers,  and  rose  from  his  chair  and  blessed 
the  crowd  with  a  sweeping,  regal,  all-embracing  gesture,  the 
solemnity  and  the  majesty  of  the  spectacle  were  indescribable, 
especially  as  the  pallor  of  the  Pope's  face  seemed  transparent, 
as  if  the  veil  of  flesh  between  himself  and  the  other  world  had 
been  refined  and  attenuated  to  the  utmost  and  to  an  almost 
unearthly  limit. 

During  Holy  Week  I  attended  some  of  the  ceremonies  at  St. 
Peter's,  and  I  think  what  impressed  me  most  was  the  blessing  of 
the  oils  on  Maundy  Thursday,  and  the  washing  of  the  altar,  when 
that  great  church  is  full  of  fragrant  sacrificial  smells  of  wine 
and  myrrh,  and  when  the  vastness  of  the  crowd  suddenly  brings 
home  to  you  the  immense  size  of  the  building  which  the  scale 
of  the  ornamentation  dwarfs  to  the  eye. 


254  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

In  May  I  went  to  Greece  in  a  yacht  belonging  to  Madame 
de  B£arn.  There  were  on  board  besides  myself  two  Austrians 
and  a  German  Professor  called  Krumbacher.  We  started  from 
Naples  and  landed  somewhere  on  the  west  coast,  and  went 
straight  to  Olympia.  As  we  landed  we  were  met  by  a  sight 
which  might  have  come  straight  from  the  Greek  anthology  :  a 
fisherman  spearing  some  little  silver  fishes  with  a  wooden 
trident,  and  wading  in  the  transparent  water  ;  and  that  water 
had  the  colour  of  a  transparent  chrysoprase — more  transparent 
and  deeper  than  a  turquoise,  brighter  and  greener  than  a 
chrysoprase.  Olympia  was  carpeted  with  flowers,  and  the 
fields  were  like  Persian  carpets  :  white  and  mauve  and  purple, 
with  the  dark  blood-red  poppies  flung  on  the  bright  green  corn. 
At  every  turn  sights  met  you  that  might  have  been  illustrations 
to  Greek  poems :  a  woman  with  a  spindle ;  a  child  with  an 
amphora  on  its  head.  The  air  was  the  most  iridescent  I  have 
ever  seen.  At  sunset  time  it  was  as  if  it  was  powdered  with 
the  dust  of  a  million  diamonds,  and  in  the  background  were 
the  wonderful  blue  mountains,  and  against  the  sky  the  small 
shapes  of  the  trees. 

At  Olympia,  in  the  museum,  the  only  intact  or  nearly  intact 
masterpiece  of  one  of  the  great  Greek  sculptors  has  a  little 
museum  to  itself  :  the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles.  There  are  still 
traces,  faint  traces,  of  the  pink  colour  on  some  parts  of  the  limbs, 
and  even  of  faded  gilding.  The  marble  has  the  texture  and 
ripple  of  live  flesh  ;  the  statue  is  different  in  kind  from  all  the 
statues  in  the  Vatican,  the  Capitol,  or  the  Naples  Museum,  and 
to  see  it  is  to  have  one  of  those  impressions  that  are  like  shocks 
and  take  the  breath  away,  and  leave  one  stunned  with  admira- 
tion, wonder,  and  awe. 

From  Olympia  we  went  to  tragic  heights  and  rocks  of  Delphi, 
where  we  saw  the  bronze  statue  of  the  charioteer,  so  magnificent 
in  its  effect  and  in  its  simplicity,  and  so  startling  in  its  trueness 
to  the  coachman  type,  for  the  face  might  be  that  of  a  hansom- 
cab  driver  ;  and  from  Delphi  to  Corinth  and  Athens.  The  first 
sight  of  the  Acropolis  and  the  Parthenon  takes  the  breath  away  ; 
the  Parthenon  is  so  much  larger  than  one  expects  it  to  be  ;  and 
the  colour  of  the  pillars  is  not  white,  but  a  tawny  amber,  as  though 
the  marble  had  been  changed  to  gold.  In  the  evening  these 
pillars  stand  like  large  ghosts  against  the  purple  hills,  that  are 
dry,  arid,  like  a  volcanic  crust.     In  the  distance  you  see  the 


ROME  255 

blue  ocean.  And  Byron's  lines,  with  which  the  "Curse  of 
Minerva  "  opens  : 

"  Slow  sinks,  more  lovely  ere  his  race  be  run, 
Along  Morea's  hills,  the  setting  sun  ;  " 

describe  exactly  what  you  see.  Byron  is  by  Ear  tin-  most  satis- 
factory singer  of  Greece,  for  he  wrote  with  his  eye  on  the  spot, 
and  there  is  something  in  his  verse  of  the  exhilarating  and  in- 
candescent quality  of  the  Greek  air  ;  something  of  the  fiery 
strength  of  the  Greek  soil,  and  of  the  golden  warmth  of  the 
Greek  marbles. 

And  next  to  Byron  in  this  business  I  should  put  a  widely 
different  poet,  Heredia  ;  but  they  both  seize  on  the  character- 
istic things  in  Greek  landscape  ;  Byron,  when  he  says  : 

"  Yet  these  proud   pillars  claim  no  passing  Btgh, 
Unmoved  the  Moslem  sits,  the  light  Greek  carols  by," 

perhaps  even  mere  than  Heredia,  when  he  writes  : 

"  Jc  suis  ne  libre  au  fond  du  golfe  aux  belles  lignes, 
Ou  l'Hybla  plein  de  miel  mire  ses  bleus  sommets." 

An  architect  once  pointed  out  to  me  that  one  of  the  most 
striking  instances  of  the  Greek  fastidiousness  in  matters  of  art 
is  to  be  found  in  the  pavement  of  the  Parthenon,  which  is  not 
quite  flat,  but  which  is  made  on  a  slight  curved  incline,  so  thai 
the  effect  of  perfect  flatness  to  the  eye  should  be  complete. 
The  curve  cannot  be  detected  unless  the  measurements  are 
taken,  showing,  as  the  architect  said  to  me,  that  the  Greeks 
aimed  at  the  maximum  of  effect  with  the  minimum  of 
advertisement. 

While  I  was  at  Athens  there  was  a  scaffolding  on  the  pedi- 
ment of  the  Parthenon.  One  could  climb  up  and  examine  in 
detail  the  marbles  spared  by  Lord  Elgin,  the  wonderful  horses 
and  men  which  were  wrought  in  the  workshop  of  Pheidia>.  I 
bought  photographs  of  all  this  part  of  the  frieze,  and  I  used  to 
have  them  later  in  my  little  house  in  London,  which  made  my 
servant,  who  had  been  in  the  10th  Hussars,  remark  to  a  lady 
who  was  doing  some  typing  for  me,  that  there  were  -cine  very 
rum  pictures  in  the  house. 

From  Athens  we  went  to  Sunium,  the  whitest  and  most 
beautifully  placed  of  the  temples,   and  thence  to  the  Greek 


256  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

islands — Scyra,  Delos,  and  Paros.  The  skipper  of  the  yacht, 
who  was  like  one  of  Jacobs'  characters,  made  an  elaborate 
plan  for  taking  in  Professor  Krumbacher,  whom  he  used  to  call 
"  Crumb-basket."  We  were  to  go  to  Rhodes  later,  and  the 
skipper,  by  misleading  him  on  the  chart,  led  him  to  think  the 
yacht  was  arriving  at  Rhodes  when  in  reality  we  were  arriving 
at  Candia  in  Crete.  The  Professor  believed  him  so  absolutely 
and  greeted  the  pretended  Rhodes  with  such  certainty  of 
recognition  that  it  was  difficult  to  undeceive  him.  I  had  to  leave 
the  expedition  at  Scyra,  to  get  back  to  Rome,  which  I  did  by 
taking  a  passage  in  the  only  available  steamer,  a  small,  rickety, 
and  extremely  unreliable-looking  craft,  like  a  tin  toy-boat. 
It  was  bound  for  some  port  not  far  from  the  Piraeus.  It  had 
no  accommodation  to  speak  of,  and  it  was  overloaded  with 
soldiers  and  with  sheep,  and  both  the  sheep  and  the  soldiers 
were  sea-sick  without  stopping. 

It  was  a  rough  passage  and  lasted  all  night  and  all  the  next 
morning.  I  stood  on  the  little  bridge  the  whole  time,  which 
was  the  only  place  where  there  was  space  to  breathe.  I  was 
deposited  somewhere  on  the  coast,  where  the  only  train  had 
left  for  Athens.  A  tramp  steamer  called  later,  which  was  going 
on  to  the  Piraeus,  and  I  got  a  passage  in  that.  I  stayed  two 
more  days  in  Athens  by  myself.  One  afternoon  while  I  was  at 
the  Acropolis  I  met  a  peasant  and  had  a  little  talk  with  him. 
1  had  with  me  in  a  little  book  Sappho's  "  Ode  to  Aphrodite," 
and  I  asked  him  to  read  it  aloud,  which  he  did,  remarking  that 
it  was  in  patois. 

I  went  back  to  Rome  by  Corfu,  where  I  stopped  to  see  the 
Todten-Insel  and  the  complicated  classical  villa  of  the  German 
Emperor. 

As  the  summer  progressed,  I  went  for  one  or  two  delightful 
expeditions  in  the  environs  of  Rome.  One  was  to  Limfa,  which 
I  think  is  the  most  magical  spot  I  have  ever  seen.  A  deserted 
castle  rises  from  a  lake,  which  is  entirely  filled  with  water- 
lilies,  tangled  weeds,  and  green  leaves.  It  was  deserted  owing 
to  the  malaria  that  infested  it,  but  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  it 
haunted  by  anything  except  fairies  or  water-nymphs. 

In  Rome  itself  I  often  went  for  walks  with  Vernon  Lee.  She 
used  to  stay  with  Countess  Pasolini,  and  take  me  to  see  out- 
of-the-way  sights  and  places  rich  with  peculiar  association.  I 
remember  on  one  walk  passing  a  little  low  wall  by  a  stream,  with 


ROME  257 

an  image  of  a  river  god,  which  she  said  might  have  been  the 
demarcation  between  two  small  kingdoms,  the  kind  of  limit  that 
divided  the  kingdoms  of  Romulus  and  Remus  ;  one  after- 
noon we  went  to  the  Pincio,  and  in  the  walks  and  trees  of  that 
enchanted  garden  we  spoke  of  the  past  and  the  future  and  built 
castles  in  the  air,  or  smoked  what  Balzac  called  enchanted 
cigarettes,  that  is  to  say,  talked  of  the  books  that  never  would 
be  written. 

Lord  Currie  went  away  before  the  summer,  and  Rennell 
Rodd  was  left  in  charge  of  the  Embassy.  I  got  to  know  a 
quantity  of  people  :  Russians,  Romans,  Americans,  Germans, 
Austrians  ;  and  a  stream  of  foreigners  and  English  people 
poured  through  Rome.  I  went  on  taking  Russian  lessons 
and  also  lessons  in  modern  Greek,  and  slowly  and  gradually 
I  made  my  first  discoveries  in  Russian  literature  written  in 
the  Russian  language.  I  read  Pushkin's  prose  stories  aloud, 
some  of  his  poems,  and  Alexis  Tolstoy's  poems,  and  some  of 
Tourgenev's  prose. 

One  of  the  poems  that  affected  me  like  a  landmark  and  eye- 
opener  in  my  literary  travels  was  a  poem  called  Tropar  (Tro- 
parion  :  a  dirge  for  the  dead),  by  Alexis  Tolstoy.  I  think  even  a 
bald  prose  version  will  give  some  idea  of  the  majesty  of  that 
poem. 

Hymn 

'  What  delight  is  there  in  this  life  that  is  not  mingled  with 
earthly  sorrow  ?  Whose  hopes  have  not  been  in  vain,  and 
where  among  mortals  is  there  one  who  is  happy  ?  Of 
all  the  fruits  of  our  labour  and  toil,  there  is  nothing  that 
shall  last  and  nothing  that  is  of  any  worth.  Where  is  the 
earthly  glory  that  shall  endure  and  shall  not  pass  away  ?  All 
things  are  but  ashes,  and  a  phantom,  shadow  and  smoke. 
Everything  shall  vanish  as  the  dust  of  a  whirlwind  ;  and  face  to 
face  with  death,  we  are  defenceless  and  unarmed;  the  hand 
of  the  mighty  is  feeble,  and  the  commands  of  Kings  are  as 
nothing.  Receive,  O  Lord,  Thy  deputed  Servant  into  Thy 
happy  dwelling-place. 

"  Death  like  a  furious  knight -at -arms  encountered  me,  and 
like  a  robber  he  laid  me  low  ;  the  grave  opened  its  jaws  and  took 
away  from  me  all  that  was  alive.  Kinsmen  and  children,  save 
yourselves,  I  call  to  you  from  the  grave.  Be  saved,  my  brothers 
and  my  friends,  so  that  you  may  not  behold  the  Barnes  of  Hell. 
17 


258  THE  PUPrET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Life  is  the  kingdom  of  vanity,  and  as  we  sniff  the  odour 
of  death,  we  wither  like  flowers.  Why  do  we  toss  about  in 
vain  ?  Our  thrones  are  all  graves,  and  our  palaces  are  but 
ruins.  Receive,  O  Lord,  Thy  departed  Servant  into  Thy  happy 
dwelling-place. 

"  Amidst  the  heap  of  rotting  bones,  who  is  king  or  servant, 
or  judge  or  warrior  ?  Who  is  deserving  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
and  who  is  the  rejected  and  the  evil-doer  ?  O  brothers,  where 
is  the  gold  and  the  silver,  where  are  the  many  hosts  of  servants  ? 
Who  is  a  rich  man  and  who  is  a  poor  man  ?  All  is  ashes  and 
smoke,  and  dust  and  mould,  phantom  and  shadow  and  dream  ; 
only  with  Thee  in  Heaven,  0  Lord,  there  is  refuge  and 
safety ;  that  which  was  flesh  shall  perish,  and  our  pomp  fall  in 
corruption.  Receive,  O  Lord,  Thy  departed  Servant  into  Thy 
happy  dwelling-place. 

"  And  Thou,  who  dost  intercede  on  behalf  of  us  all,  Thou, 
the  defender  of  the  oppressed,  to  Thee,  most  Blessed  One,  we 
cry,  on  behalf  of  our  brother  who  lies  here.  Pray  to  thy  Divine 
Son.  Pray,  O  most  Pure  among  Women,  for  him.  Grant  that 
having  lived  out  his  life  upon  earth,  he  may  leave  his  affliction 
behind  him.    All  things  are  ashes,  dust  and  smoke  and  shadow. 

0  friends,  put  not  your  faith  in  a  phantom !  When,  on  some 
sudden  day,  the  corruption  of  death  shall  breathe  upon  us, 
we  shall  perish  like  wheat,  cut  down  by  the  sickle  in  the 
cornfields.  Receive,  O  Lord,  Thy  departed  Servant  into  Thy 
happy  dwelling-place. 

"  I  follow  I  know  not  what  path  ;  half-hopeful,  half-afraid, 

1  go  ;  my  sight  is  dim,  my  heart  has  grown  cold,  my  hearing  is 
faint,  my  eyes  are  closed.  I  am  lying  sightless  and  without 
motion,  I  cannot  hear  the  wailing  of  the  brethren,  and  the  blue 
smoke  from  the  censer  pours  forth  for  me  no  fragrance  ;  yet 
my  love  shall  not  die;  and  in  the  name  of  that  love,  O  my 
brothers,  I  implore  you,  that  each  one  of  you  may  thus  call 
upon  God  :  Lord,  on  that  day,  when  the  trumpet  shall  sound 
the  end  of  the  world,  receive  Thy  departed  Servant,  O  Lord, 
into  Thy  happy  dwelling-place." 

Looking  back  on  that  summer  in  Rome,  I  shut  my  eyes  now, 
and  I  see  the  Campagna,  with  its  prodigal  wealth  of  tall  grasses 
and  gay  wild  flowers  ;  its  little  sharp  asphodels  with  their 
faint  smell  of  garlic;    the  Villa  d'Este,  with  its  overgrown 


ROME  259 

terraces,  and  musical  waterfalls,  and  tangled  vegetation — the 

home  of  an  invisible  slumbering  Princess  ;  and  Tivoli. 

"  Tihur  Argaeo  positum  colono 
Sit  mcae  sedcs  utinain  KnectlB 
Sit  modus  lasso  maris  et  viarum 
Militijeque." 

That  was  the  first  Ode  of  Horace  I  ever  read  win  n  I  was  up 
to  Arthur  Benson,  in  Remove,  at  Eton.  I  remember  wondering 
at  the  time,  what  sort  of  place  Tibur  was,  where  Hora<  « . 
tired  of  journeys  by  land  and  by  sea,  and  tired  of  wars  and 
rumours  of  war,  wished  to  build  himself  a  final  nest. 

When  I  saw  Tivoli,  with  its  divinely  elegant  waterfall,  1 
understood  his  wish  ;  nor  could  I  imagine  a  more  enchanting 
haven,  a  more  complete  and  peaceful  final  goal  for  the  end  of 
a  pilgrimage. 

I  see  the  lake  of  Xemi,  where  the  barges  of  Tiberius — is  it 
Tiberius  ? — still  rest  beneath  the  water  ;  and  Frascati,  and  the 
view  from  the  roof  of  a  house  in  the  Via — which  Via  ?  I  forget, 
but  it  was  not  far  from  Porta  Pia  ;  and  from  thence,  in  the  red 
sunset,  you  saw  St.  Peter's  ;  and  I  see  the  view  of  the  whole 
city  from  the  Janiculum  .  .  .  more  memories  here,  and  older 
ones  from  Maeanlay  .  .  .  and  the  Palatine  by  moonlight  ;  the 
moon  streaming  on  all  the  thousand  fragments,  and  the  few 
large  plinths  of  the  Forum  ;  and  Vernon  Lee  saying  that  moon- 
light on  the  Palatine  sounded  like  a  stage  direction  in  a  play  of 
Shelley's  ;  and  I  see  the  marbles  coloured  like  some  pale  sea- 
weed in  Santa  Maria  in  Cosmedin,  and  the  peep  at  St.  Peter's, 
through  the  keyhole  of  one  of  the  College  gardens,  and  the 
fountains  in  the  moonlight,  on  the  top  of  the  hill,  as  you  driv. 
from  the  station,  and  the  fountain  of  Trcvi  into  which  I  threw 
a  penny,  wishing  that  I  might  come  back  to  Rome,  one  day, 
but  not  as  a  diplomat  ;  and  the  Milanese-shops  in  the  Corso,  and 
the  vast  cool  spaces  of  St.  Peter's,  <>n  a  1 1 1 . t  day,  when  you  swung 
back  the  heavy  curtain;  and  the  courtyard  in  Brewsti 
Palace;  and  then  tin-  heat  ;  the  great  heat  when  the  shutters 
were  shut,  and  one  stayed  indoors  all  day  ;  and  the  arrival  of  an 
Indian  Prince,  whom  we  met  in  frock-coats,  at  six  in  the  morning 
at  the  railway  station,  and  who  turned  out  not  to  be  a  Priin  e 
at  all,  but  a  man  of  inferior  caste,  and  who  drank  far  too  much 
wliisky,  and  far  too  little  soda,  in  the  Embassy  garden,  and 


26o  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

became  painfully  loud  and  familiar  ;  and  at  a  little  tea-party 
in  my  rooms,  with  Brewster  and  someone  else  ;  a  Roman  lady, 
looking  like  a  Renaissance  picture,  regal,  stately,  in  a  white 
fur  and  tippet ;  a  lady  with  hosts  of  adorers,  who,  when 
she  saw  a  book  on  the  Burmese  or  Buddhism,  on  my  table, 
called  The  Hearts  of  Men,  said  with  a  smile  :  "  That  is  a 
subject,  I  think,  I  know  something  about " ;  and  the  Roman 
women,  no  less  majestic,  but  more  vociferous,  in  the  Trastevere, 
or  kneeling  with  the  grace  of  sculpture  before  the  Pieta  in 
St.  Peter's. 

To  look  back  upon,  it  is  all  a  wonderful  dream-world  of 
sunshine  and  flowers  and  beauty ;  but  at  the  time,  I  did  not 
really  like  Rome.  In  spite  of  the  many  charming  people  I  met 
there,  in  spite  of  the  associations  of  the  past,  and  the  daily 
beauty  of  the  present,  I  did  not  enjoy  living  at  Rome  as  a 
diplomat.  There  was  a  good  deal  to  do  at  the  Embassy,  and 
not  a  large  staff,  and  I  only  once  went  for  an  expedition  that 
lasted  more  than  one  day.  Besides  which,  a  diplomat  at  Rome 
was  caught  in  a  net  of  small  social  duties,  visits,  days  on  which 
one  had  to  call  at  the  Embassies,  cards  to  be  left  ;  one  could 
not  enjoy  Rome  freely.  Besides  which,  I  felt  as  if  I  were  living 
in  a  cemetery,  and  I  was  oppressed  by  the  army  of  ghosts  in 
the  air,  the  host  of  memories,  so  many  crumbling  walls  and 
momentous  ruins. 

At  the  end  of  July,  I  went  to  Russia,  and  spent  three  weeks 
at  Sosnofka,  where  the  whole  of  the  Benckendorff  family  and 
one  of  their  cousins  were  staying.  I  could  now  understand 
Russian  and  read  it  without  difficulty,  and  could  talk  enough  to 
get  on.  I  had  come  to  the  definite  conclusion  that  I  did  not 
care  for  Diplomacy  as  a  career.  I  did  not  think  then,  and  I 
do  not  think  now,  that  it  is  worse  than  any  other  career.  "  II 
n'y  a  pas  de  sot  metier,"  and  Diplomacy,  like  anything  else, 
is  what  you  make  it.  But  unless  your  heart  is  in  the  work, 
unless  you  like  it  for  its  own  sake,  you  will  never  make  anything 
of  it,  and  I  did  not  like  it.     I  wanted  literary  work. 

My  first  step  was  to  try  and  get  back  to  England.  I  applied 
for  a  temporary  exchange  into  the  Foreign  Office  and  got  it. 
I  went  back  to  London  in  January  1903,  and  worked  in  the 
Foreign  Office,  in  the  Commercial  Department,  for  the  rest  of 
that  summer.  In  the  autumn,  I  went  to  Russia  once  more,  and 
spent  most  of  my  time  translating  a  selection  of  Leonardo  da 


ROME  261 

Vinci's  Thoughts  on  Art  and  Life  for  the  Humanists'  Library, 
published  by  the  Merrymount  Press,  Boston. 

I  wanted  to  devote  myself  to  literature  ;  but  it  was  difficult 
to  find  an  opening.  I  had  little  to  show  except  a  book  of  poems 
published  in  1902,  three  articles  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britunnica, 
an  article  in  the  Saturday  Review,  and  one  in  the  Natiunul 
Review. 

I  approached  a  publisher  with  the  proposal  of  translating  all 
Dostoievsky's  novels,  or  those  of  Gogol.  But  he  said  there  would 
be  no  market  for  such  books  in  England.  Dostoievsky  had 
not  yet  been  discovered,  and  in  one  of  the  leading  literary 
London  newspapers,  even  as  late  as  1905,  he  was  spoken  of  in 
a  long,  serious  article,  as  being  a  kind  of  Xavier  de  Montepin  ! 
Gogol  has  not  yet  been  discovered,  and  only  one  of  his  books 
has  been  adequately  translated. 

I  cared  for  the  Foreign  Office  even  less  than  for  Diplomacy  ; 
and  the  only  incident  of  interest  I  remember  was  one  day  when 
one  of  those  toy  snakes  that  you  squeeze  and  shut  up  in  a  box, 
and  which  expand  when  released  to  an  enormous  size,  and  hurtle 
through  the  air  with  a  scream,  was  circulated  in  the  Office  in  a 
red  box.  Every  department  was  taken  in,  in  turn  ;  and  when 
it  reached  my  department,  I  sent  it  up  to  the  typists' department, 
where  it  was  opened  by  the  head  lady  typist,  a  severe  lady,  who 
was  so  overcome  that  she  at  once  applied  for  and  received  three 
weeks'  leave,  as  well  as  a  letter  of  abject  apology  from  myself. 

I  made  up  my  mind  to  abandon  Diplomacy  and  the  Foreign 
Office  as  a  career,  to  go  to  Russia,  to  study  Russian  thoroughly, 
and  then  to  make  the  most  of  my  knowledge  later,  and  to  use 
it  as  a  means  for  doing  something  in  literature  ;  but  before 
doing  this,  I  applied  to  be  put  en  disponibilite  for  six  months 
and  I  went  back  to  Russia  just  after  Christmas  in  1904. 

Count  Benckendorl'f  had  been  appointed  Ambassador  to 
London  and  had  taken  up  his  duties  in  January,  1903.  All 
through  the  autumn  of  1903,  the  political  situation  in  the  Far 
East  had  given  rise  to  anxiety.  Russia  and  Japan  seemed  to 
be  drifting  into  war.  Tin-  Russian  Government  apparently  did 
not  want  to  go  to  war,  but  nobody  in  it  had  a  definite  policy  : 
and  the  strings  were  being  pulled  by  various  incompetent 
adventurers  in  the  Far  East.  The  Japanese  took  advantage 
of  this  and  brought  matters  to  a  head. 

Before  I  went  to  Russia.  1  saw  Lord  Cuirie  and  Lady  Currie 


262  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

for  the  last  time  in  London.  Lord  Currie  had  given  up 
Diplomacy.  He  did  not  believe  there  would  be  war,  nor  did 
many  people  at  the  Foreign  Office,  but  they  based  their  belief 
on  what  they  thought  were  the  wishes  of  the  Russian  Govern- 
ment. They  knew  nothing  of  the  more  definite  intentions  of 
the  Japanese,  nor  of  the  irresponsible  factors  among  the  Russians 
in  the  Far  East. 

I  arrived  at  St.  Petersburg  just  after  Christmas. 


CHAPTER    XIV 
RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA 

WHEN  I  arrived  at  St.  Petersburg,  the  situation  was 
regarded  as  grave,  but  people  still  did  not  believe 
in  war.  Sir  Charles  Scott,  our  Ambassador,  had 
just  left,  or  was  just  leaving  ;  and  Cecil  Spring  Rice  was  in  charge 
at  the  Embassy.  The  large  Court  functions  which  were  held 
at  the  Winter  Palace  at  St.  Petersburg,  just  after  Christmas, 
were  to  take  place  :  the  Court  concert  and  the  State  ball.  The 
concert  was  held,  and  Chaliapine  sang  at  it,  but  the  State  ball 
was  put  off.  And  never  again  was  a  State  ball  given  in  St. 
Petersburg.  I  had  never  seen  St.  Petersburg  before.  I  was 
staying  in  the  Fontanka,  at  Countess  Shuvaloff's  house,  and  I 
was  delighted  by  the  crystal  atmosphere,  and  the  drives  in 
open  carriages  ;  there  was  a  little  snow  on  the  ground,  but  not 
enough  for  sledging. 

People  said  there  would  be  no  war,  and  then  we  woke  up  one 
morning  and  heard  the  Japanese  had  attacked  the  Russian 
fleet  at  Port  Arthur,  and  torpedoed  the  Retvizan.  Constant ine 
Benckendorff,  Count  Benckendorff's  eldest  son,  was  on  board 
the  Retvizan  when  this  happened ;  and  I  was  told  afterwards, 
that  no  orders  had  been  given  by  the  port  authorities,  that  is 
to  say,  by  Alexcieff,  the  Viceroy,  to  put  out  torpedo-nets,  or  to 
take  any  precautions,  although  the  Viceroy  had  been  warned 
that  day  of  the  probability  of  an  attack.  The  morning  we 
heard  that  war  had  been  declared  I  remember  seeing  a  cabman 
driving  by  himself  down  the  quays  and  nodding  his  head  and 
repeating  to  himself  :  "War!  war!"  ("  Voind  !  wind .'"). 
It  was  like,  on  a  smaller  ^cale,  the  days  of  August  1914.  The 
crowds  in  the  street  were  enthusiastic.  Officers  were  carried 
in  triumph  in  the  streets  by  the  students,  the  same  officers 
that  a  year  later  were  hooted  and  stoned  in  the  same  street-. 

I  only  stayed  a  short  time  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  then  I  went 
to  Moscow,  to  the  house  of  Marie  Karlovzra  von  K<'t/,  a  lady 

t63 


264  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

who  took  in  English  pupils,  mostly  officers  in  the  British  Army, 
to  teach  them  Russian.  She  lived  in  an  out-of-the-way  street, 
on  the  second  story  of  a  small  house,  and  gave  one  or  two  lessons 
every  day.  She  was  a  fine  teacher,  and  a  brilliant  musician ; 
an  energetic  and  extremely  competent  woman,  and  an  example 
of  the  best  type  of  the  intelligentsia. 

One  day,  a  friend  of  hers,  a  young  married  lady,  came  in  and 
said  she  was  starting  for  the  Far  East,  as  a  hospital  nurse.  She 
seemed  to  be  full  of  enthusiasm.  She  was  a  young  and  charming 
person,  bristling  with  energy  and  intelligence.  The  sequel  of 
this  story  was  a  strange  one.  A  year  later,  she  reappeared  at 
Marie  Karlovna's  house — I  think  she  had  been  to  the  war  in 
the  meantime — and  said  :  "  I  am  now  going  to  the  Far  West," 
and  she  went  to  Paris.  She  stayed  there  a  short  time,  and  then 
came  back  to  Moscow  and  went  to  the  play  every  night,  bought 
jewels,  went  to  hear  the  gipsies,  and  then  quite  suddenly  shot 
herself  on  Tchekov's  tomb.  The  explanation  of  her  act  being 
her  disgust  with  public  events  and  her  wish  to  give  her 
land  to  the  peasants.  She  left  her  estate  to  them  in  her  will. 
In  the  normal  course  of  things  it  would  go  to  her  brother,  but 
her  brother  was  a  fanatical  reactionary,  and  she  killed  herself 
rather  than  he  should  have  it.  But,  as  it  turned  out,  she  had 
reckoned  without  Russian  law,  which  said  that  the  wills  and 
bequests  of  those  who  committed  suicide  in  Russia  were  null 
and  void,  and  so  the  property  went  to  her  brother  after  all. 
Suicides  at  the  tomb  of  Tchekov  became  so  frequent  that  a 
barrier  was  put  round  it,  and  people  were  forbidden  to  visit  it. 

There  were  one  or  more  other  pupils  living  in  Marie  Kar- 
lovna's house  besides  the  English  Consul,  who  used  to  board 
there.  We  used  to  have  dinner  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
and  a  late  supper,  ending  in  tea,  wliich  used  to  go  on  till  far 
into  the  night.  It  was  there  I  made  my  first  acquaintance 
with  the  peculiar  comfortless  comfort  of  Russian  life  among 
the  intelligentsia.  Nothing  could  seemingly  and  theoretically 
be  more  uncomfortable  ;  the  hours  irregular  ;  no  door  to  any 
room  ever  being  shut  ;  no  fireplaces,  only  a  stove  lit  once  every 
twenty-four  hours  ;  visitors  drifting  in,  and  sitting  and  talking 
for  hours  ;  but  nothing  in  practice  was  more  comfortable.  There 
was  an  indescribable  ease  about  the  life,  a  complete  absence  of 
fuss,  a  fluid  intimacy  without  any  of  the  formalities,  any  of  the 
small  conventions  and  minute  ritual  that  distinguish  German 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  265 

bourgeois  life  and,  indeed,  are  a  part  of  its  charm.  In  Russia, 
everybody  seemed  to  take  everybody  and  everything  for  granted. 
There  were  no  barriers,  no  rules,  no  obstacles.  No  explanations 
were  ever  thought  necessary  or  were  either  ever  asked  for  or 
given.  Time,  too,  had  no  meaning.  One  long  conversation 
succeeded  another,  into  which  different  people  drifted,  and 
from  which  people  departed  without  anyone  asking  why  or 
whence  or  whither.  Moscow  in  winter  was  a  comfortable  city. 
The  snow  was  deep;  sometimes  in  the  evening  we  would  go  to 
the  montagnes  Russes  and  toboggan  down  a  steep  chute,  and 
more  often  I  would  go  to  the  play. 

At  that  time  the  Art  Theatre  at  Moscow,  the  Hudozhestvoui 
T eater,  was  at  the  height  of  its  glory  and  of  its  excellence.  This 
theatre  had  been  started  about  four  years  previously  by  a 
companyof  well-to-do  amateurs  under  the  direction  of  M.  Stanis- 
lavsky. I  believe,  although  I  am  not  quite  sure,  they  began 
by  acting  The  Mikado  for  fun,  continued  acting  for  pleasure, 
and  determined  to  spare  neither  trouble  nor  expense  in  making 
their  performances  as  perfect  as  possible.  They  took  a  theatre, 
and  gave  performances  almost  for  nothing,  but  the  success  of 
these  performances  was  so  great,  the  public  so  affluent,  that 
they  were  obliged  to  take  a  new  theatre  and  charge  high  prices. 
Gradually  the  Art  Theatre  became  a  public  institution.  In 
1904  they  possessed  the  best  all-round  theatre  in  Russia,  if  not 
in  Europe. 

The  rise  of  such  a  theatre  in  Russia  was  not  the  same  thing 
as  that  of  an  Art  Theatre  would  be  in  London.  For  in  Moscow 
and  St.  Petersburg  there  were  large  State-paid  theatres  where 
ancient  and  modern  drama  was  performed  by  highly  trained 
,i;id  excellent  artists  ;  but  it  stood  in  relation  to  these  theatres  as 
the  Theatre  Antoine  to  the  Com^die  Franchise,  the  Vaudeville, 
and  the  Gymnasc  in  Paris  :  with  this  difference,  that  the  ailing, 
though  equally  finished,  was  more  natural,  and  the  quality  of 
the  plays  performed  unique  on  the  European  stage.  The  Art 
Theatre  made  the  reputation  of  Tchekov  as  a  dramatist.  His 
firsl  serious  play,  Ivanov,  was  performed  at  one  of  the  minor 
theatres  at  Moscow,  and  we  can  read  in  his  letters  what  he 
thought  of  that  performance.  Another  of  his  important  plays, 
The  Seagull  [Chaika),  was  performed  at  one  of  the  big  Mate-paid 
theatres  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  well  performed,  but  on  con- 
ventional lines.     It  is  not  surprising  the  play  failed.     When 


266  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

this  same  play  was  performed  by  the  Art  Theatre  at  Moscow, 
it  was  triumphantly  and  instantly  successful.     The  reason  is 
that  Tchekov's  plays  demand  a  peculiar  treatment  on  the  stage 
to  make  their  subtle  points  tell,  and  cross  the  footlights.     In 
them  the  clash  of  events  is  subservient  to  the  human  figure ; 
and  the  human  figure  itself  to  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  is 
plunged.     Later,  I  saw  The  Seagull  played  at  a  State  theatre  at 
St.  Petersburg,  long  after  Tchekov's  reputation  was  firmly  estab- 
lished.   It  was  well  played,  but  the  effect  of  the  play  was  ruined, 
or  rather  non-existent.     In  London,  I  saw  The  Cherry  Orchard 
and  another  play  of  his  done,  where  the  company  had  not  even 
realised  the  meaning  of  the  action,  besides  being  costumed  in 
the  most  grotesquely  impossible  clothes,  as  grotesque  and  im- 
possible as  it  would  be  to  put  on  the  English  stage  a  member 
of  Parliament  returning  from  the  House  of  Commons  in  a  kilt, 
or  dressed  as  a  harlequin.     One  of  the  most  dramatic  situations 
in  one  of  these  plays  had  simply  escaped  the  notice  of  the  pro- 
ducer, and  was  allowed  not  only  to  fall  flat,  but  was  not  rendered 
at  all.     It  was  this  :  a  man,  who  has  been  wounded  in  the  head 
and  has  a  bandage,  has  a  quarrel  with  his  mother,  and  in  a 
passion  of  rage,  he  tears  his  bandage  from  his  head,  with  the 
obj  ect  of  reopening  his  wound,  and  killing  himself.   The  company 
had,  I  suppose,  read  the  stage  direction,  which  says :  "  Man 
removes  bandage,"  and  the  words  of  the  scene  were  spoken 
without  any  emotion  or  emphasis,  and  at  one  moment,  the  man 
quietly  removed  his  bandage,  and  dropped  it  on  the  floor,  as 
though  it  were  in  the  way,  or  as  if  he  were  throwing  down  a 
cigarette  which  he  has  done  with. 

In  Moscow,  in  the  Art  Theatre,  every  effect  was  made  to 
tell,  and  the  acting  was  so  natural  that  on  one  occasion  I 
remember  a  man  in  the  stage-box  joining  in  the  conversation 
and  contradicting  one  of  the  actors.  Although  the  ensemble 
of  the  troupe  was  superlative,  they  had  no  actor  or  actress  of 
outstanding  genius,  no  Duse,  no  Sarah  Bernhardt,  no  Irving, 
no  Chaliapine  ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  not  one  small  part 
which  was  not  more  than  adequately  played. 

In  1904,  they  had  just  produced  The  Cherry  Orchard  by 
Tchekov,  and  soon  afterwards,  Tchekov  died.  That  winter,  I 
saw  The  Cherry  Orchard  and  Uncle  Vania,  Shakespeare's  Julius 
Ccesar,  and  Hauptmann's  Lonely  Lives. 

The  end  of   Uncle  Vania  was  unforgettable.     The  subject 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  267 

and  action  of  that  play  can  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words.  The 
play  is  called  Scenes  from  Country  Life.  A  professor,  not  unlike 
Casaubon,  in  MidJlcmarch,  marries  a  young  and  beautiful  wife. 
His  estate  is  managed  by  his  first  wife's  brother,  Uncle  Vania, 
assisted  by  his  niece,  a  good  girl  ill-favoured  in  looks.  Astroff, 
a  doctor,  is  called  in  to  minister  to  the  professor.  Uncle  Vania 
is  in  love  with  the  professor's  wife.  His  niece,  Sonia,  is  in  love 
with  Astroff.  The  professor's  wife,  a  non-moral,  well-meaning 
Circe,  is  interested,  but  not  more  than  interested,  in  the  doctor, 
and  flirts  with  him  enough  to  prevent  his  marrying  the  girl. 
The  nerves  of  these  various  characters,  under  the  stress  of  the 
situation,  are  worked  up  to  such  a  pitch,  that  Uncle  Vania  actually 
tries  to  kill  the  professor,  and  shoots  at  him  twice,  but  misses 
him.  Then  the  professor  and  his  wife  go  away  ;  the  doctor 
goes  back  to  his  practice,  and  Uncle  Vania  and  his  niece  are 
left  behind  to  resume  the  tenor  of  their  way.  You  see  the 
good-byes  :  a  half-passionate,  half-cynical  good-bye,  between 
the  professor's  wife  and  the  doctor — the  professor  says  good-bye 
to  Uncle  Vania,  and  to  Uncle  Vania 's  old  mother.  You  hear 
the  bells  of  the  horses  outside,  in  the  autumn  evening.  One 
after  another,  Uncle  Vania's  mother,  his  niece,  and  the  old 
servant  of  the  house  come  in  and  say  :  "  They  have  gone  !  ' 

When  I  first  saw  the  play,  this  is  what  I  wrote  about  it,  and 
I  have  nothing  to  add,  nor  could  I  put  it  differently  : 

'  Described,  this  appears  insignificant  ;  seen,  acted  as  it 
is  with  incomparable  naturalness,  it  is  indescribably  effective. 
In  this  scene  a  particular  mood,  which  we  have  all  felt,  is  cap- 
tured and  rendered  ;  a  certain  chord  is  struck  which  exists  in 
all  of  us;  that  kind  of  'toothache  at  heart'  which  we  feel 
when  a  sudden  parting  takes  place  and  we  are  left  behind. 
The  parting  need  not  necessarily  be  a  sad  one.  But  the  tenor 
of  our  life  is  interrupted.  As  a  rule  the  leaves  of  life  are  turned 
over  so  quickly  and  noiselessly  by  Time  that  we  are  not  aware 
of  the  process.  In  the  case  of  a  sudden  parting  we  hear  the 
Leaf  of  life  turn  over  and  fall  back  into  the  great  blurred  book 
of  the  past — read,  finished,  and  irrevocable.  It  is  this  hearing 
of  the  turning  leaf  which  Tchekov  has  rendered  merely  by  three 
people  coming  into  a  room  one  after  another  and  saying  : 
'  They've  gone  I 

*  The  intonation  with  which  the  old  servant  said  :  '  They've 
gone  ' — an  intonation  of  peculiar  cheerfulness  with  which 
servants  love  to  underline  what  is  melancholy-  was  marvellous. 
The  lamp  is  brought    in.     Lastly  the  doctor  goes.     The  old 


268  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

mother  reads  a  magazine  by  the  lamplight  ;  the  clatter  of  the 
horses'  hoofs  and  the  jingling  of  bells  are  heard  dying  away  in 
the  distance  ;  and  Uncle  Vania  and  his  niece  set  to  work  at 
their  accounts  .  .  .  you  hear  the  abacus — always  used  in 
Russian  banks — making  a  clicking  noise  .  .  .  and  the  infinite 
monotony  of  their  life  begins  once  more." 

The  first  performances  of  The  Cherry  Orchard  were  equally 
impressive.  I  saw  it  acted  many  times  later,  but  nothing 
touched  the  perfection  of  its  original  cast.  The  Cherry  Orchard 
is  the  most  symbolic  play  ever  written.  It  summed  up  the 
whole  of  pre-revolutionary  Russia.  The  charming,  feckless 
class  of  landowners  ;  the  pushing,  common,  self-made  man, 
who  with  his  millions  buys  the  estate  with  the  cherry  orchard 
that  the  owners  have  at  last  to  sell,  because  they  cannot  con- 
sent to  let  it  to  cut  their  losses ;  the  careless  student ;  the 
grotesque  governess  ;  all  of  them  dancing  on  the  top  of  a  volcano 
which  is  heaving  and  already  rumbling  with  the  faint  noise  of 
the  coming  convulsion.  The  Russo-Japanese  War  and  its 
consequences  were  the  beginning  of  these  convulsions ;  and,  as 
Count  Benckendorff  prophesied  to  me  in  1903,  as  soon  as  war 
came  to  Russia,  there  was  a  revolution. 

Pierre  Benckendorff,  Count  Benckendorff's  second  son,  who 
was  an  officer  in  the  Gardes-a-cheval,  started  for  Manchuria 
soon  after  the  war  began.  He  exchanged  into  a  Cossack  regi- 
ment for  the  purpose,  as  the  Guards  did  not  go  to  the  front. 
He  looked  so  radiantly  young  and  adventurous,  when  he  started, 
that  we  were  all  of  us  afraid  he  would  never  come  back.  He 
passed  through  Moscow  on  his  way  to  the  front,  and  I  spent 
the  day  with  him.  He  asked  me  why  I  did  not  try  to  go  to  the 
war  as  a  newspaper  correspondent,  as  I  could  speak  Russian, 
and  his  father  would  be  able  to  give  me  letters  of  recommenda- 
tion to  the  military  authorities.  His  words  sank  deep,  and  I 
determined  to  try  and  do  this.     I  at  once  wrote  to  his  father. 

Count  Benckendorff  thought  the  idea  was  an  excellent  one ; 
and  just  before  Easter  I  went  to  London  to  try  and  get  a  news- 
paper to  send  me  out.  I  went  to  the  Morning  Post,  where  I 
knew  Oliver  Borthwick,  the  son  of  the  proprietor,  Lord  Glenesk. 
At  first  the  matter  seemed  to  be  fraught  with  every  kind  of 
difficulty,  but  in  the  end  things  were  arranged,  and  towards  the 
end  of  April  I  started  for  St.  Petersburg,  on  my  way  to  Man- 
churia, laden  with  a  saddle,  a  bridle,  a  camp  bed,  and  innumer- 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  269 

able  cooking  utensils.  I  knew  nothing  about  journalism,  and 
still  less  about  war,  and  I  felt  exactly  as  if  I  were  going  back  to 
a  private  school  again. 

I  stopped  two  nights  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  engaged  a 
Russian  servant.  He  was  a  gigantic  creature,  who  had  served 
in  a  cavalry  regiment  of  the  Guards.  At  Moscow,  I  met  Brooke, 
who  was  going  out  as  correspondent  for  Reuter,  and  we  settled 
to  travel  together. 

The  journey  was  not  uneventful.  As  far  as  Irkutsk, 
travelled  in  the  ordinary  express  train,  which  had  comfortable 
first-  and  second-class  carriages,  a  dining-room,  a  pianoforte, 
a  bathroom,  and  a  small  bookcase  full  of  Russian  books.  The 
journey  from  Moscow  to  Irkutsk  lasted  nine  nights  and  eight 
days.  Guy  Brooke  and  I  shared  a  first-class  compartment.  I 
made  friends  with  the  official  who  looked  after  the  train,  and 
gave  him  my  pocket-knife  ;  and  he  undertook  to  post  a  letter  for 
me  when  he  got  back  to  Moscow.  He  kept  his  promise,  and  my 
first  dispatch  to  the  Morning  Post,  the  first  dispatch  from  our 
batch  of  correspondents,  got  through  without  being  censored. 
There  was  not  much  war  news  in  it.  In  fact,  it  contained  a 
long  and  detailed  account  of  a  performance  of  Tchekov's  Uncle 
Vania  at  the  Art  Theatre  at  Moscow. 

On  board  the  train,  there  was  a  French  correspondent, 
M.  Georges  La  Salle,  and  a  Danish  Naval  Attache,  and  another 
English  correspondent,  Hamilton  ;  several  Russian  officers, 
and  a  Russian  man  of  business,  who  lived  at  Vladivostok. 
This  man  gave  us  a  good  deal  of  trouble  ;  he  thought  we  were 
English  spies,  and  told  us  we  would  never  be  allowed  to  reach 
our  destination.  He  did  his  best  to  prevent  our  doing  so.  Il> 
told  the  officers  we  were  spies,  and  their  manner,  which  at  first 
had  been  friendly,  underwent  a  change,  and  became  at  firsl 
suspicious,  and  finally  openly  hostile.  The  passenger  trains 
ran  from  Irkutsk  to  Baikal  Station,  and  it  was  at  Baikal  that 
the  real  interest  of  the  journey  began.  Lake  Baikal  was  frozen, 
and  was  crossed  daily  by  two  large  ice-breakers,  which  ploughed 
through  three  feet  of  half-melted  ice.  The  passage  lasted  four 
hours.  The  spectacle  when  we  started  was  marvellous.  It 
had  been  a  glorious  day.  The  sun  in  the  pure  frozen  sky  was 
like  a  fiery,  red,  Arctic  ball.  Before  us  stretched  an  immense 
sheet  of  ice,  powdered  with  snow  and  spotless,  except  for  a  long 
brown  track  which  had  been  made  by  the  sledges.     On  the 


270  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

far-off  horizon  a  low  range  of  mountains  disappeared  in  a  veil  of 
snow  made  by  the  low-hanging  clouds.  The  mountains  were 
intensely  blue  ;  they  glinted  like  gems  in  the  cold  air,  and  we 
seemed  to  be  making  for  some  mysterious  island,  some  miraculous 
reef  of  sapphires.  Towards  the  west  there  was  another  and 
more  distant  range,  where  the  intense  deep  blue  faded  into  a 
delicate  and  transparent  sea-green — the  colour  of  the  seas 
round  the  Greek  Islands — and  these  hills  were  like  a  phantom 
continuation  of  the  larger  range,  as  unearthly  and  filmy  as  a 
mirage. 

As  we  moved,  the  steamer  ploughed  the  ice  into  flakes, 
which  leapt  and  were  scattered  into  fantastic,  spiral  shapes,  and 
flowers  of  ice  and  snow.  As  the  sun  sank  lower,  the  strange- 
ness and  the  beauty  increased.  A  pink  halo  crept  over  the 
sky  round  the  sun,  which  became  more  fiery  and  metallic.  Some 
lines  from  Coleridge's  "Ancient  Mariner"  came  into  my  head 
which  exactly  fitted  the  scene  : 

"  And  now  there  came  both  mist  and  snow 
And  it  grew  wondrous  cold  : 
And  ice,  mast-high,  came  floating  by 
As  green  as  emerald." 

As  the  sun  set  the  whole  sky  became  pink,  and  the  distant 
mountains  were  like  ghostly  caverns  of  ice. 

We  arrived  at  eight.  It  was  dark,  and  the  other  ice-breaker 
was  starting  on  its  return  journey  to  the  sound  of  military 
music. 

About  eleven  o'clock  we  resumed  our  journey.  The  train 
was  so  full  that  it  was  impossible  not  only  to  get  a  seat  in  the 
first-  or  second-class,  but  at  first  it  seemed  doubtful  whether  we 
should  obtain  a  place  of  any  kind  in  the  train.  I  jumped  into 
a  third-class  carriage,  which  was  at  once  invaded  by  a  crowd  of 
muzhik  women  and  children.  An  official  screamed  ineffectually 
that  the  carriage  was  reserved  for  the  military;  upon  which 
an  angry  muzhik,  waving  a  huge  loaf  of  bread  (like  an  enormous 
truncheon),  cried  out,  pointing  to  the  seething,  heterogeneous 
crowd  :  '  Are  we  not  military  also — one  and  all  of  us 
reservists  ?  "     And  they  refused  to  move. 

The  confusion  was  incredible,  and  one  man,  by  the  vehement 
way  in  which  he  flung  himself  and  his  property  on  his  wooden 
seat,  broke  it,  and  fell  with  a  crash  to  the  ground.     The  third- 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  271 

class  carriages  were  formed  in  this  way  :  the  carriage  was  not 
divided  into  separate  compartments,  but  was  like  a  corridor 
carriage,  with  no  partition  and  no  doors  between  the  carriage 
proper  and  the  corridor.  It  was  divided  into  three  section-, 
each  section  consisting  of  six  plank  beds,  three  on  each  side 
of  the  window,  and  one  placed  above  the  other,  forming  three 
stories.  There  was  besides  this  one  tier  of  seats  against  and 
over  the  windows  in  the  passage  at  right-angles  to  the  regular 
seats.  The  occupant  of  each  place  had  a  right  to  the  whole 
length  of  the  seat,  so  that  he  could  lie  down  at  full  length.  I 
gave  up  my  seat  in  the  first  carriage,  as  I  had  lost  sight  of  my 
luggage  and  my  servant,  and  I  went  in  search  of  the  guard. 
The  guard  found  places  for  Brooke  and  myself  in  a  carriage 
occupied  mostly  by  soldiers.  He  told  them  to  make  room  for 
us.  It  seemed  difficult,  but  it  was  done.  I  was  encamped  on 
a  plank  at  the  top  of  the  corridor  part  of  the  carriage.  I  re- 
member being  awakened  the  next  morning  by  a  scuffle.  A 
party  of  Chinese  coolies  had  invaded  the  train.  They  were 
drunk  and  they  slobbered.  The  soldiers  shouted  :  "Get  out, 
Chinese."  They  were  bundled  backwards  and  forwards,  and 
rolled  on  to  the  platform  outside  the  train,  where  the}-  were 
allowed  to  settle.  It  was  now,  in  this  railway  carriage,  that  I 
for  the  first  time  came  into  intimate  contact  with  the  Russian 
people,  for  in  a  third-class  railway  carriage  the  artificial  barrh as 
of  life  arc  broken  down,  and  everyone  treats  everyone  else 
as  an  equal.  I  was  immensely  interested.  The  soldiers  began 
to  get  up.  One  of  them,  dressed  in  a  scarlet  shirt,  stood  again>t 
the  window  and  said  his  prayers  to  the  rising  sun,  crossing 
himself  many  times.  A  little  later  a  stowaway  arrived  ;  he 
had  no  ticket,  and  the  under-guard  advised  him  to  get  under  the 
seat  during  the  visit  of  the  ticket  collector.  This  he  did,  and 
he  stayed  there  until  the  visit  of  the  ticket  collector  was  over, 
and  whenever  anew  visit  was  threatened,  he  hid  again. 

After  the  fust  day,  I  was  offered  a  scat  on  the  ground  floor 
in  the  central  division  of  the  carriage,  because  I  had  a  bad 
foot,  and  the  fact  was  noticed.  My  immediate  neighbours 
were  Lit  tie  Russians.  They  asked  many  questions  :  whether  the 
English  were  orthodox  ;  the  price  of  food  and  live  stock  ;  the 
rate  of  wages  in  England  ;  and  they  discussed  foreign  countries 
and  foreign  langi  in  general.     One  of  them  said  French 

was  the  most  difficult  language,  and  Russian  the  easiest*    The 


272  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

French  were  a  clever  people.     "  As  clever  as  you  ?  "  I  asked. 
"  No,"  they  answered;  "  but  when  we  say  clever  we  mean  nice." 
I  gradually  made  the  acquaintance  of  all  the  occupants  of 
the  compartment.     They  divided  the  day  into  what  they  called 
"  occupation  "   and   "  relaxation."     Occupation  meant  doing 
something  definite  like  reading  or  making  a  musical  instru- 
ment— one  man  was  making  a  violin — relaxation  meant  playing 
cards,  doing  card  tricks,  telling  stories,  or  singing  songs.     In  the 
evening  a  bearded  soldier,  a  native  of  Tomsk,  asked  me  to 
write  down  my  name  on  a  piece  of  paper,  as  he  wished  to  mention 
in  a  letter  home  that  he  had  seen  an  Englishman.     He  had 
never  seen  one  before,  but  sailors  had  told  him  that  English- 
men were  easy  to  get  on  with,  and  clean — much  cleaner  than 
Russians.     He  told  me  his  story,  which  was  an  extremely 
melancholy  one.     He  had  fallen  asleep  on  sentry-go  and  had 
served  a  term  of  imprisonment,  and  had  been  deprived  of  civil 
rights.     For  the  first  time  I  came  across  the  aching  sadness  one 
sometimes  met  with  among  Russians,  an  unutterable  despair, 
a  desperate,  mute  anguish.     The  conversation  ended  with  an 
exchange  of  stories  among  the  soldiers.     One  of  them  told  me  a 
story  about  a  priest.     He  wondered  whether  I  knew  what  a 
priest  meant,  and  to  make  it  plain  he  said  :    "  A  priest,  you 
know,  is  a  man  who  always  lies." 

I  asked  the  bearded  man  if  he  knew  any  stories.  He  at 
once  sat  down  and  began  a  fairy-tale  called  The  Merchant's  Son. 
It  took  an  hour  and  a  half  in  the  telling.  Very  often  the  men 
who  in  Russia  told  such  stories  could  neither  read  nor  write, 
but  this  man  could  read,  though  he  had  never  read  the  story 
he  told  me  in  a  book.  It  had  been  handed  down  to  him  by  his 
parents,  and  to  them  by  his  grandparents,  and  so  on,  word  for 
word,  with  no  changes.  This  is  probably  how  the  Iliad  was 
handed  down  to  one  generation  after  another.  Later  on  I  was 
told  stories  like  this  one  by  men  who  could  neither  read  nor 
write.  The  story  was  full  of  dialogue  and  reiteration,  and 
every  character  in  it  had  its  own  epithet  which  recurred  through- 
out the  story,  every  time  the  character  was  mentioned,  just  as 
in  Homer.  When  he  had  finished  his  story,  he  began  another 
called  Ivan  the  Little  Fool.  It  began  in  this  kind  of  way  : 
"  Once  upon  a  time  in  a  certain  country,  in  a  certain  kingdom, 
there  lived  a  King  and  a  Queen,  who  had  three  sons,  all  braver 
and  brighter  than  pen  can  write  or  story  can  tell,  and  the 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  273 

third  was  called  Ivan  the  Fool.  The  King  spoke  to  them  thus  : 
'Take  each  of  you  an  arrow,  pull  your  bow-string  taut,  and  shoot 
in  different  directions,  and  where  the  arrow  falls  there  shall  you 
find  a  wife.'  The  eldest  brother  shot  an  arrow,  and  it  fell  on 
a  palace  just  opposite  the  King's  daughters'  quarters ;  and  the 
second  son  shot  an  arrow,  and  it  fell  opposite  the  red  gate  of  the 
house  where  lived  the  lovely  merchant's  daughter  ;  and  the  third 
brother  shot  an  arrow, and  it  fell  in  a  muddy  swamp  and  a  frog 
caught  it.  And  Ivan  said  :  '  How  can  I  marry  a  frog  ? '  She 
is  too  small  for  me.'  And  the  King  said  to  him  :  'Take  her.'  " 
And  then  the  story  went  on  for  a  long  time,  and  in  it  Ivan  the 
Fool  was,  of  course,  far  more  successful  than  his  two  elder 
brothers.  Another  soldier  told  me  a  version  of  the  story  of 
King  John  and  the  Abbot  of  Canterbury. 

The  ballad  says  that  King  John  asked  the  Abbot  three 
questions.  The  first  one  was  how  much  he  was  worth  ;  the 
second  one  how  soon  he  could  ride  round  the  world  ;  and  the 
third  question  the  Abbot  had  to  answer  was,  what  the  King  was 
thinking  of.  And  the  Abbot  answered  the  third  question  by 
saying  :  "  You  think  I'm  the  Abbot  of  Canterbury,  but  I  am 
really  only  his  shepherd  in  disguise."  The  soldier  told  it  in 
exactly  the  same  way,  except  that  the  Abbot  became  a 
Patriarch,  and  King  John  the  Tsar  of  Moscow,  and  the  shepherd 
a  miller.  And  when  he  had  finished,  he  said  :  "  The  miller  lives 
at  Moscow  and  I  have  seen  him." 

The  soldiers  spoke  little  of  the  war.  One  of  them  said 
the  Japanese  were  a  savage  race,  upon  which  the  sailor  who  had 
been  to  Nagasaki,  cut  him  short  by  saying:  "They  are  a 
charming,  clean  people,  much  more  cultivated  than  you  or  I." 
One  of  the  soldiers  said  it  would  have  been  a  more  sensible 
arrangement  if  the  dispute  had  been  settled  by  a  single  combat 
between  Marquis  Ito  and  Count  Lamsdorff. 

The  night  before  we  arrived  at  Manchuria  station  the 
passengers  sang  songs.  Four  singers  sang  some  magnificent 
folk-songs,  and  among  others  the  song  of  the  Siberian  ex:! 
"  Glorious  Sea  of  Holy  Baikal,"  one  singing  the  melody  and 
the  others  joining  in  by  repeating  or  imitating  it.  But  the  song 
which  was  the  most  popular  was  a  ballad  sung  by  a  sailor, 
who  was  taking  part  in  the  concert.  He  had  composed  it 
himself.  It  was  quite  modern  in  tune  and  intensely  senti- 
mental. It  was  about  a  fallen  maiden,  who  had  left  the  palaces 
[8 


274  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

of  the  rich  and  died  in  hospital.  It  was  exactly  like  the  kind 
of  song  I  heard  bluejackets  sing  on  board  an  English  man-of- 
war  years  later.  At  Manchuria  station  we  had  a  lot  of  bother 
owing  to  the  commercial  gentleman,  and  I  annoyed  him  greatly 
by  talking  in  front  of  him  to  a  Greek  merchant,  who  was  at  the 
buffet,  in  Greek — a  language  with  which  he  was  imperfectly 
acquainted.  The  commercial  gentleman  tried  to  prevent  us 
going  farther,  but  he  did  not  succeed,  as  our  papers  were  in 
perfect  order.  But  he  succeeded  in  having  us  put  under  arrest, 
and  two  Cossacks  were  told  to  keep  watch  over  us  during  the 
remainder  of  the  journey.  In  the  meantime  the  officers  had 
telegraphed  for  information  about  us  to  Kharbin,  and  the  next 
morning  they  received  a  satisfactory  answer,  and  their  whole 
demeanour  changed.  From  Manchuria  station  to  Kharbin  the 
journey  lasted  three  days  and  two  nights,  and  we  arrived  at 
Kharbin  after  a  journey  of  seventeen  days  from  St.  Petersburg. 

I  have  forgotten  the  latter  part  of  that  journey,  but  I  re- 
corded at  the  time  that  a  crowd  of  Chinese  officers  boarded  the 
train  at  one  station  and  filled  up  the  spare  seats,  especially 
top  seats,  whence  they  spat  without  ceasing  on  the  occupants 
of  the  lower  seats,  much  to  the  annoyance  of  a  French  lady, 
who  said  :  "  Les  Chinois  sont  impossibles." 

Kharbin  was  a  large,  straggling  place,  part  of  which  con- 
sisted of  a  Chinese  quarter,  an  "  Old  "  Russian  quarter  which 
was  like  a  slice  of  a  small  Russian  provincial  town,  and  a  modern 
quarter  :  Government  Offices,  an  hotel,  restaurants,  a  church, 
and  the  Russo-Chinese  bank. 

The  sight  of  Kharbin  when  I  arrived — the  mud,  the  absence 
of  vehicles,  the  squalor,  the  railway  station,  a  huge  art  nouveau 
edifice,  the  long  vistas  of  muddy  roads  or  swampy  trails,  the 
absence  of  any  traces  of  civilisation,  and  then  the  hotel,  which 
was  dearer  than  any  hotel  I  have  ever  stayed  at  before  or 
since,  with  its  damp,  dirty  room  and  suspicious  bedstead,  and 
its  convict  squinting  waiters  still  redolent  of  jail  life,  and  its 
millions  of  flies — filled  me  with  despair.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  war  Kharbin  was  the  centre  of  everything  that  was  undesir- 
able in  the  Russian  army  and  in  the  civilian  populations  of  the 
whole  world.  Later  on,  Kuropatkin  forbade  officers  to  go  there 
except  under  special  circumstances.  When  we  arrived,  there 
were  a  certain  number  of  officers  on  their  way  to  the  front, 
and  of  officers  who  had  escaped  from  the  front  for  a  few  days' 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  275 

leave.  The  restaurants  were  full  of  Qoisy,  .shouting  crowds, 
and  nondescript  ladies  in  cheap  finery,  about  which  everything 
was  doubtful  except  their  profession. 

There  were  a  number  of  Greek  traders  in  the  town ;  and 
wherever  there  is  a  war,  in  whatever  part  of  the  world,  Greek 
traders  seem  to  rise  from  the  ground  as  if  by  magic,  with 
sponges  and  other  necessaries,  for  sale.  At  Harbin,  there 
was  also  a  local  population  of  engineers  and  soldiers,  who  had 
jobs  there,  but  these  I  only  got  to  know  a  year  later.  I  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Colonel  Potapoff  at  Kharbin.  He  was  one 
of  the  press  censors  who  had  to  look  after  the  correspondents. 
He  had  been  to  South  Africa.  We  became  friends  with  him  at 
once,  and  I  saw  him  frequently  during  the  next  ten  years. 

I  only  stayed  a  week  at  Kharbin.  I  travelled  to  Mukden 
in  great  luxury  in  a  first-class  carriage  reserved  by  General 
Kholodovsky.  The  General  entertained  me  like  a  prince.  He 
was  extremely  cultivated,  courteous,  and  well  read  ;  a  collector 
of  china  ;  an  admirer  of  Tolstoy  ;  a  big  game  shooter.  I  stayed 
in  his  carriage  a  week  after  we  had  arrived  at  Mukden. 

At  Mukden  we  were  plunged  in  China  proper.  It  was  as 
Chinese,  so  I  was  told,  as  Pekin — even  more  Chinese.  The  town 
was  a  long  way  from  the  station,  and  one  drove  to  it  in  a  rick- 
shaw pulled  along  by  a  Chinese  coolie.  The  drive  took  nearly 
an  hour.  But  I  made  tlus  interesting  discovery,  that  if  everyone 
goes  by  rickshaw  it  is  just  the  same  as  if  everyone  travels  by 
motor-car.  You  are  not  conscious  of  life  being  slower.  The 
day  after  I  arrived,  I  called  at  a  house  where  some  of  the  other 
war  correspondents  were  living.  There  was  Charles  Hands  of 
the  Daily  Mail,  and  there  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  M.  de 
Jessen,  a  Danish  correspondent.  At  the  station  I  had  already 
been  met  and  well  omed  by  Whigham,  who  was  also  correspond- 
ent for  the  Morning  Post.  He  had  rooms  in  Mukden,  and  he 
asked  me  to  come  and  share  them.  I  did  so.  I  moved  into  the 
town,  and  arrived  at  the  Der-Lung-I  )en  (the  Inn  of  the  Dragon), 
a  large  courtyard  surrounded  by  a  series  of  rooms  that  had  DO 
second  story.  I  was  shown  one  of  these  rooms  and  was  told 
it  could  be  mine.  It  seemed  suitable,  but  it  had  no  floor 
but  earth,  and  no  paper  on  the  walls  ;  in  fact,  it  was  not  more 
like  a  room  than  the  stall  of  a  stable.  But  the  Chini  se  hotel- 
keeper  said  that  would  be  all  right.  An  architect,  a  builder, 
and  an  upholsterer  wen   sent  for,  and  that   very  day  the  stall 


276  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

was  converted  into  a  comfortable  and  elegant  bedroom,  with  a 
floor  carpeted  with  matting  and  an  elegant  wall-paper,  and  was 
ready  for  use.  Apparently  the  Chinese  did  not  make  a  room 
inhabitable  in  an  hotel  until  they  knew  someone  was  going  to 
inhabit  it.  The  next  thing  was  to  get  a  servant.  I  had  brought 
a  servant  from  Russia,  but  he  had  complained  of  the  hard  work. 
In  fact,  he  had  said  he  was  not  used  to  work  at  all.  As  he  had 
been  a  trooper  in  a  cavalry  regiment  this  seemed  a  little  strange, 
but  he  explained  that  the  work  had  always  been  done  for  him. 
He  was  not  one  of  the  World's  Workers.  He  showed  signs  of 
grumbling,  but  Colonel  Potapoff  made  short  work  of  his  griev- 
ance and  packed  him  off  home  by  the  next  train.  I  engaged  a 
Chinese  servant,  called  Afoo,  who  came  from  southern  China. 

The  next  thing  was  to  buy  a  pony  and  engage  a  groom,  a 
Mafoo.  When  it  became  known  I  wanted  a  pony,  the  whole 
yard  seemed  to  swarm  with  ponies.  I  bought  one  with  the 
assistance  of  the  hotel-keeper.  It  seemed  to  be  a  fairly  amen- 
able animal,  but  the  Mafoo,  whom  I  engaged  afterwards,  at  once 
pointed  out  to  me  that  it  was  almost  blind  in  one  eye.  I  soon 
made  the  acquaintance  of  all  the  other  correspondents  :  Ludovic 
Naudeau,  who  was  writing  for  the  Journal ;  Recouly,  who  was 
writing  for  the  Temps  ;  Archibald,  who  was  photographing  for 
I  don't  know  how  many  American  newspapers  ;  Millard,  who 
wrote  for  the  New  York  World  ;  Simpson,  who  was  the  Daily 
Telegraph  correspondent  ;  Colonel  Gaedke,  the  representative 
of  the  Berliner  Tageblatt,  and  Premier  Lieutenant  von  Schwartz, 
who  wrote  for  the  Lokal  Anzeiger. 

M.  de  Jessen  has  written  a  chapter  of  sketches  on  all  these 
characters,  and  the  life  we  lived  at  Mukden,  in  a  book  called 
Men  I  Have  Met,  published  in  Copenhagen  in  1909.  The  best 
writer  of  all  these  was  probably  Ludovic  Naudeau.  Charles 
Hands  could  have  rivalled  him,  but  he  wisely  never,  or  hardly 
ever,  put  pen  to  paper. 

Colonel  Gaedke  stood  aloof  in  his  military  technical  know- 
ledge. He  was  stiff  in  opinions,  and,  as  it  happened,  always  in 
the  wrong.  He  was  one  of  those  people  who  are  wrong  from 
the  right  reasons.  He  saw  at  once  that  people  talked  nonsense 
about  the  Russian  Army,  and  this  led  him  rashly  to  prophesy 
they  would  win  the  war.  He  was  indignant  with  the  strategy 
of  the  higher  command.  He  used  to  arrive  in  a  great  state  of 
excitement  and  say  :  "  Kuropatkin  has  again  made  a  mistake." 


RUSSIA  AND  l£AN(  1HKIA  --■; 

And  on  one  occasion  he  told  me  that  if  tin-  Russian  Gem  rah 
went  on  waging  war  in  such  a  fashion,  he  would  go  home,  he 
simply  could  not  look  on  at  so  many  glaring  errors  in  tactics 
and  strategy. 

Of  the  correspondents  the  most  extraordinary  character  was 
Archibald.  He  wore  about  four  rows  of  medals  on  his  tunic.  In 
fact,  he  went  to  war  to  collect  medals,  and  he  had  been  with  the 
Boers  and  with  the  English  during  the  South  African  War.  He 
was  the  despair  of  the  press  censors.  He  wanted  to  go  home 
after  he  had  been  at  Mukden  a  certain  time  and  had  taken  a 
number  of  photographs  ;  but  he  wanted  to  go  home  via  Japan 
and  not  across  the  Trans-Sib<  rian  railway.  This  corre-pondents 
had  promised  not  to  do,  but  Archibald  hid  determined  to  do  it. 
He  took  one  of  the  press  censors  with  him  to  Pckin,  and  arranged 
for  his  party  to  be  kidnapped  and  subsequently  rescued.  When 
he  came  back,  he  used  the  adventure  as  a  lever,  and  obtained 
the  permission  he  wished.  His  imagination  was  unlimited,  and 
his  power  of  statement  unrivalled.  When  he  came  back  from 
Pckin  he  said  he  had  interviewed  the  Emperor  of  China  and  the 
Empress,  and  he  had  been  made  a  Mandarin  of  the  highest 
i  1  i-s.  During  the  European  War,  I  believe  he  got  into  trouble 
by  bringing  Austrian  papers  into  England. 

M.  tie  hssen  was  the  most  amiable  of  Danes,  a  shrewd 
observer  and  a  vivid  writer.  But  the  most  interesting  of  all 
the  correspondents  I  knew  was  a  Russian  I  met  later,  called 
Nicholas  Popoff,  who  was  destined  to  be  one  of  the  pioneers  of 
flying  in  Russia,  and  one  of  the  first  pilots  to  accomplish  daring 
feats  in  the  air.  Alas  !  he  paid  for  his  temerity  with  a  bad 
crash,  which  disabled  him  for  life. 

We  led  a  restless  but  amusing  life.  Everyone  wanted  to 
go  to  the  front,  and  nobody  was  allowed  to  go. 

Mukden  would  have  been  an  ideal  spot  to  spend  the  summer 
in,  if  there  had  been  no  war  going  on.  The  climate  was  warm  ; 
the  air  fresh  ;  the  place  full  of  colour,  variety,  and  interest . 
Mukden  is  a  large,  square  town  surrounded  by  a  huge,  thick, 
dilapidated,  and  mouldering  wall,  on  the  top  of  which  you  can 
go  for  a  long  walk.  Inside  the  wall,  the  closely  packed  one- 
storied  houses  are  intersected  by  two  or  three  main  streets  and 
innumerable  small  alleys.  The  shops  in  the  main  streets  are  gay 
and  splendid  with  sign-bo. mK  :  huge  blue-and-red  boots  covered 
with  gold  stars  hang  in  front  of  the  bootmakers  ;    golden  and 


278  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

many  coloured  shields  and  banners  hang  in  front  of  other  shops  ; 
gongs  clang  outside  the  theatres  to  attract  the  passers-by  ; 
every  now  and  then  a  Mandarin  rides  by,  gorgeous  in  navy 
blue   and    canary-coloured    satin,    on    a   white   fast-trotting 
pony,  and  behind  him,  at  a  respectful  distance,  his  servant 
follows  him  on  a  less  elegant  piece  of  horse-flesh  ;  or  large 
carts  lumber   along  with   prehistoric  wheels,   and  with  the 
curtains   of  their   closed   hoods    drawn,   probably  conveying 
some  Chinese  ladies.     Add  to  all  this,  sunshine  and  the  smell 
of  life  and  brilliant  colour.     There  is  nothing  modern  in  the 
town.     It  is  the  same  as  it  was  a  thousand  years  ago,  and  at 
Mukden  you  could  live  the  same  life  as  a  contemporary  of  Julius 
Caesar  lived.     One  of  the  most  curious  features  of  Mukden  is 
the  palace.     It  is  deserted,  but  it  still  contains  a  collection  of 
priceless  art  treasures,  jewels,  china,  embroidery, [and  illuminated 
MSS.     These  treasures  are  locked  up  in  mouldering  cupboards. 
Its  courtyards  are  carpeted  with  luxuriant  grass,  its  fantastic 
dilapidated  wooden  walls  are  carven,  painted,  and  twisted  into 
strange  shapes  such  as  you  see  on  an  Oriental  vase.     The  planks 
are  rotten,  the  walls  eaten  with  rain  and  damp,  and  one  thanks 
Heaven  that  it  is  so,  and  that  nothing  has  been  restored. 

In  Mukden  no  house  had  more  than  one  story,  and  the 
houses  of  the  well-to-do  were  divided  into  quadrangles  like 
an  Oxford  College.  Life  at  Mukden,  without  the  complicated 
machinery  of  European  modern  life,  without  any  of  the  appli- 
ances that  are  devised  for  comfort  and  which  so  often  are  engines 
of  unrest,  had  all  the  comforts  one  could  wish.  There  were  no 
bathrooms  ;  on  the  other  hand,  if  you  wanted  a  hot  bath,  a 
Chinaman  would  bring  you  an  enormous  tub,  long  and  broad 
enough  to  lie  down  in,  and  fill  it  with  boiling  water  from  kettles. 
There  was  no  question  of  the  bath  being  tepid  because  some- 
thing had  gone  wrong  with  the  pipes  or  the  tap. 

Mukden  reminded  me  of  a  Chinese  fairy-tale  by  Hans  Ander- 
sen. The  buildings,  the  shops,  the  temples,  the  itinerant 
pedlars,  the  sounding  gongs,  the  grotesque  signs  seemed  to 
belong  to  the  realm  of  childish  trolldom  or  to  some  great  panto- 
mime. It  was  in  the  place  of  Mukden,  one  felt,  that  the 
Emperor  of  China,  whom  Andersen  tells  of,  sat  and  sighed  for 
the  song  of  the  nightingale,  when  his  artificial  metallic  singing 
bird  suddenly  snapped  and  ceased  to  sing.  Still  more  enchanting 
in  the  same  way  were  the   tombs  of   Pai-Ling  and  Fu-Ling. 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  279 

Here  the  delicate  and  gorgeous-coloured  buildings,  red  as 
lacquer  and  curious  in  design,  which  protect  the  remains  of  the 

Manchurian  dynasty,  are  approached  by  wild  * 1  ways,  paths 

of  soft  grass,  and  alleys  of  aromatic  and  slumbcr->cented  trees. 

The  high,  quaint  towers  and  ramparts  which  surround  the 
tombs  are  half  dilapidated,  the  colours  are  faded,  the  staircases 
rotten  and  overgrown  with  moss  and  grass,  and  no  profane  hand 
is  allowed  to  restore  or  repair  them. 

While  I  was  at  Mukden  I  had  an  interview  with  the  Chinese 
Viceroy,  and  one  day  I  was  invited  to  luncheon  at  the  Chinese 
Foreign  Office.  The  meal  was  semi-European.  It  began  with  tea. 
Large  uncut  green  tea  leaves  floated  in  delicate  cups  ;  and  over 
the  cup  and  in  it  a  second  cup  put  upside  down  made  a  cover. 
There  followed  about  seventeen  courses  of  meat  entrees,  deli- 
cately cooked.  I  thought  I  would  give  one  of  the  courses  a  miss, 
and  refused  a  dish.  The  meal  immediately  ceased.  The  plan 
was  evidently  to  go  on  feeding  your  guests  till  they  had  had 
enough,  and  then  to  stop.  On  the  following  day,  the  Mandarins, 
who  had  been  present,  left  large  red  slips  of  paper,  covered 
with  elegant  characters,  on  us  ;  these  were  visiting-cards  to 
say  they  would  call  the  same  afternoon,  and  in  the  afternoon 
they  paid  us  a  visit  in  person. 

Here  at  Mukden  we  lived,  and  here  we  fretted,  and  I  fretted 
more  than  anyone,  as  I  was  so  inexperienced  in  journalism  that 
I  thought  it  was  impossible  to  write  to  the  newspaper  unless 
something  startling  happened.  Now  I  know  better.  Had  I 
had  more  experience  then,  I  should  have  known  that  Mukden 
was  a  mine  of  copy.  One  night  we  gave  a  dinner-party  at  the 
Der-Lung-Den  and  invited  all  the  correspondents  and  the 
Press  censors  as  well.  We  edited  a  newspaper  for  the  occasion, 
of  which  one  copy  was  written  out  by  hand. 

The  Mukden  Nichevo  published  articles  in  French  and  in 
English  ;  notes,  poems,  a  short  story,  and  had  an  illustrated 
cover. 

Afoo  and  his  fellow-servitors  were  in  their  glory  when  there 
was  a  dinner-party.  Their  organisation  was  as  sure  as  their 
service  was  swift  and  dexterous.  They  were  quite  imperturb- 
able, and  if  one  suddenly  said  a  few  mpments  before  dinner: 
"  There  will  be  four  extra  to  dinner  to-night,"  they  would  calmly 
say  :  "  Can  do."  Directly  he  came  into  my  service  Afoo  asked 
for  a  rise  of  wages.     He  thought  soldiers  and  fighting  in  general, 


28o  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  especially  war,  vulgar.  Once  I  told  him  he  was  stupid. 
"  Of  course,"  he  said,  "  I  am  stupid.  If  I  were  not  stupid  I 
should  not  be  your  servant,  but  a  Mandarin." 

From  Mukden  we  went  to  Liaoyang,  where  we  arrived  on 
the  22nd  of  June.  Liaoyang  was  a  smaller  town  than  Mukden, 
and  even  dirtier  and  more  picturesque.  I  lived  at  the  Hotel 
International,  which  was  kept  by  a  Greek.  It  was  a  Chinese 
house  converted  into  an  hotel,  and  had  about  twenty  rooms, 
as  small  as  boxes,  each  containing  a  stool,  a  small  basin,  and 
the  semblance  of  a  bedstead.  The  building  was  incredibly 
dirty  and  squalid  ;  the  rooms  opened  on  to  a  filthy  yard  ; 
there  was  a  noisy  and  dirty  buffet,  where  one  had  food  if  one 
waited  for  hours ;  and  also  a  hall  open  to  the  sky,  which  was 
covered  by  an  awning  of  matting  during  the  hotter  hours  of 
the  day.  The  railway  station  was  the  general  rendezvous 
and  the  centre  of  Liaoyang  life.  There,  too,  was  a  buffet 
and  its  ceiling  was  black  with  flies,  so  black  that  you  could  not 
see  a  single  white  spot  in  it.  I  fell  ill  at  this  hotel  and  had  a 
bad  attack  of  dysentery.  I  spent  the  first  day  and  night  of  my 
illness  at  the  hotel,  in  the  fly-haunted  squalor  of  the  Hotel  Inter- 
national, in  a  high,  delirious  fever.  My  Chinese  servant  dis- 
appeared for  two  days,  as  there  was  a  feast  going  on,  and  when 
he  returned  I  dismissed  him.  But  I  was  rescued  by  Dr.  West- 
water,  who  had  lived  at  Liaoyang  for  years,  and  had  a  clean, 
comfortable  house  with  a  beautiful  garden.  In  those  clean 
surroundings  and  comforts  I  soon  recovered,  and  in  July, 
Brooke  and  myself,  with  two  Montenegrin  servants,  left  for 
Tashichiao.  We  had  been  attached  to  a  cavalry  brigade  of 
the  First  Siberian  Army  Corps,  which  was  commanded  by 
General  Samsonoff.  We  went  by  train  to  Tashichiao,  with  the 
two  Montenegrins,  two  mules,  and  five  ponies,  which  it  took 
twelve  hours  to  entrain.  The  night  I  arrived  at  Tashichiao  I 
met  Count  Bobrinsky,  a  St.  Petersburg  friend,  and  he  took  me 
into  General  Kuropatkin's  train  and  gave  me  tea  in  his  mess, 
and  while  I  was  there  General  Kuropatkin  came  in  himself  and 
drank  tea.  Brooke  and  I  spent  the  night  in  the  presbytery  of 
the  Catholic  church  in  the  village. 

I  rode  to  a  village  a  few  miles  south-west  of  Tashichiao,  and 
there  I  found  the  headquarters  of  the  Brigade  established  in 
the  kitchen  garden  of  a  Chinese  house.  This  was  the  beginning 
of  a  new  life  in  a  new  world. 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  281 

That  year  in  Manchuria  the  rainy  season,  instead  of  coming 
at  its  proper  times  and  lasting  as  long  a^  it  should  have  lasted, 
came  in  sections  and  by  fits  and  starts.  So  the  country  was 
either  a  baked  desert  or  a  sea  of  mud.  Looking  back  on  that 
lime  now,  I  see,  on  the  horizon,  a  range  of  soft  blue  mountains. 
In  the  foreground,  there  is  a  Chinese  village  built  of  mud  and 
fenced  with  mud,  and  baked  by  the  sun,  yellow  and  hard. 
There  is,  perhaps,  a  little  stream  with  stepping-stones  in  it; 
a  delicate  temple,  one-storied  and  painted  red  like  lacquer, 
on  the  water  bank,  and  round  it,  as  far  as  eye  can  see,  fields  of 
giant  millet.  The  women,  dressed  in  dark  blue,  the  blue  of 
blue  china,  stand  at  the  doorsteps,  smoking  their  long-stemmed 
pipes,  and  there  is  a  crowd  of  brown,  fat,  naked  children  with 
budding  pig-tails. 

Then  I  see  the  battlefield  of  Tashichiao  :  a  low  range  of  soft 
blue  hills  in  the  distance  ;  to  the  west  a  large  expanse  of  the  ri; 
brilliant  vivid  green,  from  which  the  cone  of  an  isolated  kopje 
arose ;  to  the  east  some  dark  green  hills,  with  patches  of  sand, 
and  at  their  base  a  stretch  of  emerald-green  giant  millet ;  in 
the  middle  of  the  plain  a  hot,  sandy  road  ;  blazing  heat  and  a 
cloudless  sky,  and  Japanese  shells  bursting  in  puffs  of  brown 
and  grey,  as  if  someone  was  blowing  rings  of  tobacco  smoke 
across  the  mountains.  This  battle  was  a  long  artillery  duel, 
which  went  on  from  early  morning  until  nine  in  the  evening. 
Colonel  Gaedke,  who  was  looking  on,  said  the  Russians  were 
shooting  well.     I  wondered  how  he  could  tell. 

In  the  evening,  after  that  day's  battle,  I  rode  back  to 
Tashichiao  to  the  presbytery  of  the  Catholic  church,  where 
the  French  correspondents  had  been  living. 

It  was  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  when  I  got  home.  Two 
Chinamen  had  just  arrived  to  rebuild  the  church.  They  had 
pulled  down  the  altar,  and  at  the  top  of  the  ladder  were  working 
quietly  at  a  new  frieze.  My  two  Montenegrin  servants  were 
quarrelling  fiercely  in  the  yard  and  throwing  brushes  and 
pans  at  each  other.  My  Chinese  boy  had  prepared  a  hot  bath 
in  the  middle  of  the  yard.  A  Russian  gunner,  grimy  with  dirt 
and  sweat,  and  worn  out  with  fighting,  staggered  into  the  yard 
and  said  a  prayer,  when  he  noticed  the  building  was  a  churt  h. 
The  day  after  this,  the  first  of  many  long  ret  reats  began,  ending 
at  Haichen  station,  where  the  buffet  was  full  of  people  and 
where  I  managed  to  do  a  difficult  thing — difficult  in  Manchuria, 


282  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

that  is  to  say,  where  the  trains  waited  sometimes  eighteen 
hours  at  a  station — to  miss  the  train,  and  I  slept  on  the  platform. 

After  that,  I  remember  a  train  journey  to  Liaoyang,  and  a 
soldier  crying  in  the  train  because  another  soldier,  after  using 
strings  of  blood-curdling  language  and  startling  obscenities, 
which  did  not  produce  any  effect,  as  they  were  like  worn-out 
counters,  called  him  a  sheep  ;  and  another  soldier  dropping  his 
rifle  from  the  train,  and  jumping  from  the  train  to  pick  it  up. 

Then,  at  the  end  of  July,  a  ride  back  to  Haichen,  a  distance 
of  thirty  miles,  carried  out  in  two  stages,  and  a  night  spent  on 
the  grass  at  a  railway  siding  where  soldiers  who  guarded  the 
line  lived.  The  soldiers  entertained  me  and  gave  me  soup  and 
bread,  and  tea,  some  cucumber,  and  some  sugar.  I  thought  of 
Byron's  example  of  something  solemn  : 

"  An  Arab  with  a  stranger  for  a  guest." 

My  host  had  lived  in  this  isolated  land-lighthouse  for  four  and 
a  half  years.  He  and  the  other  soldiers  talked  of  places,  and 
one  of  them  said  the  Red  Sea  lay  between  Japan  and  China,  near 
Colombo.  Another  said  that  the  English  had  taken  Thibet. 
They  made  me  a  bed  with  some  hay  and  a  blanket,  and  I  slept 
in  the  field.  Then  came  a  start  at  dawn  and  a  ride  to  Haichen, 
where  there  was  bustle  and  confusion,  and  a  battle  expected  ; 
and  there,  for  the  first  time,  I  saw  the  ghastly  sight  of  maimed 
soldiers  being  carried  in  with  their  fresh  bandages,  their  recent 
wounds,  their  waxen  faces,  and  their  vague,  wondering  eyes. 
After  that,  a  night  in  the  village  disturbed  by  a  panic,  and 
shouts  that  the  Japanese  were  upon  us,  followed  by  the  dis- 
covery that  it  was  a  false  alarm,  and  the  further  discovery  that 
the  expected  battle  would  not  happen.  We  rode  back  to 
Liaoyang,  after  which  I  was  laid  up  with  sunstroke  and  again 
cured  by  Dr.  Westwater. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  week  of  August,  I  started  once  more 
to  find  the  Cavalry  Brigade  to  which  I  had  been  attached. 
This  time  I  took  with  me  Dimitri,  a  dark-eyed  Caucasian  with  a 
black  beard  and  a  nose  like  a  beak,  dressed  in  a  long  brown 
skirt  with  silver  trimmings,  and  armed  with  a  scimitar  and 
several  revolvers.  Dimitri  had  lived  in  the  saddle  all  his  life, 
and  when  I  complained  of  my  pony  stumbling,  he  said  :  "  It's 
not  the  pony;  the  truth  is,  little  father,  that  just  a  little  you 
don't  know  how  to  ride." 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  283 

I  found  the  Brigade.  It  was  commanded  by  a  new  General, 
called  Sichkhov.  He  was  sitting  in  the  small  and  dirty  room  of 
a  Chinese  cottage  ;  a  telegraph  was  ticking  in  the  room  next 
door,  and  everywhere  flies  were  buzzing.  "  Have  you  brought 
us  any  food  ?  "  said  the  General.  "  We  have  nothing  here,  no 
bread,  no  sugar." 

The  General  and  the  staff  lived  in  the  cottage  in  which 
there  were  two  rooms.  The  rest  of  us  lived  in  a  garden.  At 
the  bottom  of  the  garden  there  was  a  piece  of  trelli>-\  ver 

which  a  pumpkin  twined  and  climbed.  Under  it  was  my  valise. 
This  was  my  bedroom.  This  was  in  the  village  of  Davantientung. 
I  stayed  there  six  days.  We  used  to  get  up  very  early  at  four 
or  five.  I  would  say  "  Good  morning  "  to  the  doctor.  He 
would  draw  back  his  hand  and  say  :  "I  beg  your  pardon,  I 
have  not  washed."  The  ceremony  of  wasliing  was  performed 
like  this  :  you  took  off  your  shirt,  and  a  Cossack  poured  water 
from  a  pewter  cup  over  your  head  and  your  hands,  and  you 
could  use  as  much  soap  as  you  pleased.  At  noon  we  had  our 
midday  meal,  then  we  drank  tea  and  slept  ;  later  we  went  for 
a  walk,  perhaps,  and  had  supper  in  the  evening,  and  then  bed. 
But  torrents  of  rain  fell,  and  tins  idyllic  garden  soon  became  a 
swamp.  I  moved  to  another  neighbouring  Brigade,  commanded 
by  Colonel  Gurko,  and  while  I  was  there  I  dined  with  one  of  his 
batteries,  a  horse  battery  of  Trans-Baikalian  Cossacks.  They 
asked  me  to  stay  with  them  for  good,  and  I  did  so.  The  night 
after  I  had  dined  with  the  battery,  the  doctor  took  me  to  a 
church  where  there  was  a  Chinese  Catholic  priest.  His  presby- 
tery was  scrupulously  clean,  and  the  church  was  full  of  paper 
roses.  In  the  presbytery  sat  an  old  bronzed  Chinaman  reading 
his  breviary.  He  talked  French,  with  a  somewhat  limited 
vocabulary,  but  with  a  pure  French  intonation,  and  he  gave 
us  a  glass  of  fine  champagne.  The  day  after  this  we  were 
ordered  to  go  to  Davantientung,  the  village  I  had  just  left. 
There  we  occupied  a  large  Chinese  house  with  a  dirty  yard  in 
front  of  it.  Here  a  aew  epoch  began  for  me-  life  with  a  battery. 
The  Commander  of  the  battery,  Colonel  Philemonov.  \ 
away  in  hospital.  His  place  was  taken  by  a  fat.  Fal-t atlian, 
good-natured  man.  with  a  heart  of  gold,  called  Malinovsky, 
who  knew  next  to  nothing  about  gunnery.  The  gunnery  work 
was  performed  by  a  junior  Lieutenant,  Kislitsky.  There  v. 
other  younger  officers,  a  doctor,  and  a  veterinary  surgeon.     We 


284  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

all  lived  in  one  room  of  the  Chinese  house  ;  our  beds  were 
stretched  side  by  side  along  the  K'ang — the  natural  platform 
of  every  Chinese  house.  We  got  up  at  sunrise,  and  had  dinner 
at  noon.  Dinner  consisted  of  huge  chunks  of  meat,  cut  up  and 
mixed  with  potatoes,  and  served  in  a  pail.  This  dish  the  cook 
used  to  call  BoeuJ  Strogonoff,  and  it  was  the  only  dish  he  knew. 
Sometimes  the  officers  struck  and  demanded  something  else, 
but  the  dish  always  ended  by  being  Bceuf  Strogonoff . 

After  dinner,  we  used  to  sleep  on  the  K'ang,  talk  and  sleep, 
and  then  go  for  a  walk,  talk,  sleep  once  more,  and  go  to  bed. 
The  weather  was  very  hot  ;  when  it  rained,  which  it  did 
torrentially  once  every  ten  days,  it  was  hotter.  Every  house 
you  saw  was  made  of  yellow-baked  mud  ;  on  each  side  of  you 
were  endless  immense  stretches  of  giant  millet  fields,  of  an 
intense  blinding  green.  There  was  an  irresistible  languor  in 
the  air. 

In  the  yard  outside,  the  horses  munched  green  beans  in  the 
mud.  Inside  the  fangtse  all  the  flies  of  the  world  seemed  to  have 
congregated.  In  spite  of  the  heat,  one  took  shelter  under  any- 
thing, even  a  fur  rug.  To  eat  and  sleep  was  all  one  thought 
about  ;  but  sleep  was  difficult  and  the  food  was  monotonous 
and  scanty.  Insects  of  all  kinds  crawled  from  the  dried  walls 
on  to  one's  head.  Outside  the  window,  two  or  three  Chinese 
used  to  argue  in  a  high-pitched  voice  about  the  price  of  some- 
thing. There  was  perhaps  a  fragment  of  a  newspaper  four 
months  old  which  one  had  read  and  re-read.  The  military 
situation  had  been  discussed  until  there  was  nothing  more  to 
be  said.  Nowhere  was  there  any  ease  for  the  body  or  rest  for 
the  eye — an  endless  monotony  of  green  and  yellow  ;  a  land 
where  the  rain  brought  no  freshness  and  the  trees  afforded  no 
shade.  The  brain  refused  to  read  ;  it  circled  round  and  round 
in  some  fretful  occupation  such  as  half  inventing  an  acrostic. 

When  Bron  Herbert  read  the  account  I  wrote  of  life  during 
this  period  of  the  war,  he  wrote  and  told  me  that  it  had  vividly 
brought  back  to  him  his  experiences  of  camp  life  in  South 
Africa. 

"  No  fellow,"  he  wrote,  "  who  hasn't  been  through  it  can 
know  what  it's  like.  The  way  that  everyone  says  exactly  the 
same  things  that  they  would  say  if  they  were  in  London,  and  all 
the  time  they're  doing  most  absurdly  different  things.  The 
way  that  one  drifts  clean  out  of  one's  little  circle,  of  which  one 


RUSSIA  AND  MANCHURIA  2   - 

formed  an  integral  part  and  in  which  one  has  been  absorb- 
ingly interested,  and  instantaneously  finds  oneself  in  another 
quite  new  one  in  which  one  becomes  in  a  few  seconds  a  vastly 
important  component  part  and  equally  absorbed.  The  way 
in  which  one  really  spends  nine-tenths  of  one's  time  sitting  in 
some  beastly  place  without  shade,  brushing  flies  off  one's  face, 
and  somehow  one  isn't  bored  with  it.  The  way  in  which  all 
things  which  are  most  boring  at  home  become  most  interesting 
out  there.  The  way  in  which  everything  is  rather  a  blurr, 
nothing  very  distinct  but  all  one's  sensations  funny  ones,  quite 
new  and  different  ;  only  the  isolated  little  incidents  stand  out 
clear  like  oases.  There's  no  general  impression  left.  It's  like 
tops  of  mountains  sticking  up  through  a  fog." 

These  are  the  kind  of  incidents  I  remember.  One  night  a 
man  arrived  at  Davantientung  from  Moscow.  We  put  him  up. 
When  he  woke  up  in  the  morning  he  said  :  "  I  was  dreaming 
that  I  was  going  to  the  Art  Theatre  in  Moscow.  I  had  got 
tickets  ;  they  were  doing  a  new  play  by  Tchekov.  I  wake  up 
and  find  myself  here." 

Another  time  a  translation  of  H.  G.  Wells's  Food  of  the 
Gods  appeared  in  a  Russian  journal,  and  two  officers  fought  for 
it,  and  rolled  on  the  floor  till  the  magazine  was  torn  to  bits  ; 
and  they  neither  of  them  wanted  it  really. 

The  doctor  of  the  battery  and  one  of  the  young  officers 
would  argue  about  the  war,  about  the  absurdity  of  war  ;  that  if 
you  go  to  war  it  is  silly  to  look  after  the  wounded.  The  gospel 
of  f rightfulness  was  advocated  and  rejected.  Endless  dis- 
cussions  followed. 

One  evening,  the  Cossacks  bathed  their  horses  in  a  lake 
hard  by  and  swam  about  naked,  like  Centaurs.  It  was 
a  wonderful  lake,  full  of  pink  lotus  flowers,  which  in  the 
twilight,  with  the  rays  of  the  new  moon  shining  on  the  floating 
tangled  m;i^  of  green  leaf  (the  leaves  by  this  time  were  grey 
and  shimmering)  and  the  broad  pink  petals  of  the  flowers, 
made  a  harmony  that  seemed  to  call  for  the  brush  of  some 
delicate  French  impressionist  painter.  But  no  painter  could 
have  reproduced  the  silvery  magic  of  those  grevs  and  greens, 
the  fantastic  spectacle  made  by  the  moonlight,  the  twilight,  the 
shining  water,  the  dusky  leaves,  and  the  delicate  lotus  petals. 

Those  days  at  Davantientung  were  long  days.     I  suppose  1  was 

not  really  there  a  long  time,  hut  it  seemed  an  eternity.      1  went 


286  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

back  to  Liaoyang  in  the  middle  of  August,  to  post  a  letter,  and 
then  found  my  way  back  to  the  battery  by  a  miracle,  for  they 
had  moved,  and  I  arrived  at  the  very  door  of  their  new  quarters. 
Then  the  long  dream  of  the  sweltering  entr'acte  came  to  an 
end.  We  suddenly  got  orders  to  move  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  We  marched  to  a  large  village,  and  in  the  afternoon 
we  moved  on  to  another  place  where,  just  as  I  had  taken  the 
saddle  off  my  pony,  and  was  lying  down  in  a  Chinese  temple,  I 
heard  a  stir.  The  Japanese  were  reported  to  be  less  than  a  mile 
from  us,  and  had  entered  the  end  of  the  village  we  had  just  left, 
while  the  dragoons  were  going  out  of  the  other  end  of  it.  We 
marched  till  midnight  and  then  rested,  and  at  dawn  we  started 
by  a  circuitous  route  for  Liaoyang,  which  we  reached  about 
three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 


CHAPTER    XV 
BATTLES 

WE  established  ourselves  in  a  small  village  about  two 
miles  from  the  town  of  Liaoyang.  Everything  was 
calm.  This  was  on  29th  August,  and  a  battle  was 
expected  on  the  next  day.  Kuropatkin  was  rumoured  to  have 
said  that  he  would  offer  a  tall  candle  to  Our  Lady  at  Moscow  if 
the  Japanese  fought  at  Liaoyang.  A  little  to  the  south  of  us 
was  a  large  hill  called  So-shan-tse  ;  to  the  east  a  circle  of  hills  ; 
to  the  north,  the  town  of  Liaoyang.  A  captive  balloon  soared 
slowly  up  in  the  twilight.     It  did  not  astonish  the  Chinese. 

We  lay  down  to  sleep.  Nobody  thought  there  would  be  a 
battle  the  next  day.  Colonel  Philemonov  had  arrived  at  the 
battery  the  evening  we  left  Davantientung.  I  had  not  seen 
him  before,  and  the  battery  up  to  then  had  been  commanded 
nominally,  and  in  a  social  sense  by  Malinovski,  but  in  a  military 
sense  by  Kislitski.  The  first  time  I  set  eyes  on  Colonel  Phile- 
monov was  in  the  grey  dawn  in  a  Chinese  house  at  the  first 
place  we  stopped  at  after  Davantientung.  He  was  sitting 
at  a  window  in  a  grey  tunic.  Being  shortsighted,  I  mis- 
took him  for  one  of  the  other  officers,  and  I  went  boldly  up  to 
him  and  was  about  to  slap  him  on  the  back  when  he  slowly 
turned  his  grey-bearded  face  towards  me  and  looked  up  in- 
quiringly with  a  grunt.  I  fled.  I  knew  him  by  reputation. 
He  was  said  to  be  the  best  artillery  officer  in  the  Siberian  Ai  my, 
and  had  formed  the  three  Transbaikalian  horse  batteries.  He 
had  returned  no  better  from  the  hospital,  and  was  suffering  from 
a  terrible  internal  disease  ;  but  nothing  overcame  his  indomitable 
pluck. 

We  had  scarcely  laid  ourselves  down  to  rest  when  we  re- 
ceived orders  to  move  to  a  village  in  the  east.  The  horses  were 
saddled,  and  we  inarched  to  a  village  on  the  hills  east  of  So- 
shan-tse,  about  two  miles  oil.      There  we  once  more  -ettled 

.87 


288  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

down  in  a  Chinese  house,  and  I  fell  into  a  heavy  sleep.  I  was 
roused  from  this  by  the  noise  of  rifle  fire.  There  were  faint 
pink  streaks  in  the  eastern  sky.  The  village  was  on  an  eleva- 
tion, but  around  us  were  still  higher  hills.  You  could  hear 
guns  and  rifles.  The  battle  had  begun.  We  moved  out  of 
the  village  to  a  hill  about  a  hundred  yards  to  the  north-west 
of  it  ;  here  there  was  an  open  space  of  slopes  and  knolls,  not 
high  enough  to  command  a  view  of  the  surrounding  country. 
Two  regiments  of  infantry  were  standing  at  ease  on  the  hills, 
and  as  General  Stackelberg,  the  Commander  of  the  First  Army, 
and  his  Staff  rode  through  the  village,  at  the  foot  of  our  knoll, 
the  men  saluted  him,  shouting  the  usual  formula.  He  was 
wearing  a  white  tunic,  and  I  think  most  of  the  men  thought 
he  was  the  Commander-in-Chief. 

Officers  stood  on  rocks,  surveying  the  position  through  their 
glasses.  The  scene  looked  like  a  battle-picture  :  the  threaten- 
ing grey  sky,  splashed  with  watery  fire  ;  the  infantry  going 
into  action,  and  the  men  cheering  the  General,  as  he  rode  along 
with  his  smart  Staff  in  his  spotless  white  tunic  and  gold  shoulder 
straps.  To  complete  the  picture,  a  shell  burst  in  a  compound 
in  front  of  us,  where  some  dragoons  had  halted.  Presently,  we 
moved  off  to  the  west,  and  the  battery  was  placed  at  the  extreme 
edge  of  the  plain  of  millet,  west  of  the  tall  hill  of  So-shan-tse. 
Colonel  Philemonov  and  Kislitski  climbed  up  this  hill  and 
directed  the  fire  from  the  top,  on  the  right  side  of  it,  trans- 
mitting his  orders  by  a  ladder  of  men  placed  at  intervals  down 
the  hill.  The  whole  battle  occupied  an  area  of  about  20  square 
miles.  I  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  hill.  It  was  a  grey  day, 
and  all  you  could  see  was  a  vast  plain  of  millet.  The  battery 
was  firing  on  a  Japanese  battery  to  the  south-west,  at  a  range 
of  about  5000  yards.  I  could  see  the  flash  of  the  Japanese 
guns  through  my  field-glasses  when  they  fired.  Every  now 
and  then  you  could  make  out  in  a  village,  or  a  portion  of  the  plain 
where  there  was  a  clearing  in  the  millet,  little  figures  like  Noah's 
Ark  men,  which  one  knew  to  be  troops.  Colonel  Philemonov 
lay  on  the  side  of  the  hill,  and  with  him  were  Kislitski  and  the 
doctor.  The  Colonel  was  too  ill  to  do  much  himself,  and,  during 
the  greater  part  of  the  day,  it  was  Kislitski  who  gave  the  range. 
The  Colonel  was  wrapped  in  a  Caucasian  cloak,  and  every  now 
and  then  he  checked  or  slightly  modified  Kislitski's  orders. 
Kislitski  was  the  most  brilliant  officer  I  met  during  the  war. 


BATTLES  289 

He  was  cultivated  and  thoughtful  ;  he  knew  his  business  and 
loved  it.  It  was  an  art  to  him,  and  he  must  have  had  the 
supreme  satisfaction  of  the  artist  when  he  exercises  hi^  powers 
and  knows  that  his  work  is  good.  He  -  ab  olutely  fearless, 
and  never  thought  of  himself  or  of  his  career.  He  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  battery's  splendidly  accurate  firing  in  nearly 
every  engagement.  He  got  little  credit  fur  it,  but  he  did  not 
need  it  ;  his  wages  were  fully  paid  to  him  while  he  was  at  work. 
Moreover,  anything  that  accrued  to  the  Colonel  was  fully 
deserved,  because  he  had  created  the  battery  ;  the  officers 
were  his  pupils  ;  and  his  personal  influence  pervaded  it.  He 
was  always  there,  and  ready,  if  anything  went  badly,  to  sur- 
mount his  physical  suffering  and  deal  with  the  crisis. 

The  Japanese  attack  moved  slowly  like  a  wave  from  the 
south  to  the  south-west ,  until  in  the  evening,  about  seven  o'clock, 
they  were  firing  west  of  the  railway  line.  Three  guns  of  the 
battery  were  taken  and  placed  at  the  top  of  a  small  elevation 
which  hi  v  at  the  foot  and  west  of  So-shan-tse,  and  fired  due  west 
towards  the  red  setting  sun,  over  the  green  kowliang  in  which 
the  Japanese  infantry  were  advancing  and  breaking  like  a  wave 
on  a  rock.  All  day  long  the  Japanese  had  been  firing  at  us, 
but  the  shells  fell  to  the  right  of  us  in  the  millet,  and  on  the 
evening  of  the  first  day  we  had  no  casualties  of  any  kind.  To- 
wards sunset  it  began  to  rain.  I  was  sitting  on  the  edge  of 
a  road  with  a  young  officer  of  the  battery,  a  Transbaikalian 
called  Hliebnikov,  who  had  been  shouting  orders  all  day  in 
command  of  a  section.  He  was  hoarse  from  shouting,  and  deaf 
from  the  noise.  I  was  deaf  too.  We  could  neither  of  us  hear 
what  the  other  said,  and  we  shared  a  frugal  meal  out  of  a  tin 
of  potted  meat.  A  soldier  near  us  had  his  pipe  shot  out  of 
his  mouth  by  a  bullet.  I  shouted  to  him  that  it  was  rather 
a  dangerous  place.  He  shouted  back  that  he  was  too  hungry 
to  care.  By  sunset  the  Japanese  attack  had  been  driven  back. 
From  the  spectator's  point  of  view,  the  kowliang,  the  giant 
green  millet,  hid  everything.  From  a  hill  you  could  see  the 
infantry  disappear  into  the  kowliang  ;  you  could  hear  the  firing, 
and  the  battle  seemed  to  be  going  on  underground.  In  the 
evening  you  saw  the  result  in  the  stream  of  wounded  and  mangled 
men  who  were  carried  from  the  field  to  the  ambulant  1 

A  terrible  procession  was  wending  its  way  to  Liaoyang — 
some  of  the  men  on  foot,  others  carried  on  stretchers.     I  met 

'9 


2qo  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

one  man  walking  quietly.  He  had  a  bandage  soaked  red  round 
the  lower  part  of  his  face ;  his  tongue  and  lips  had  been  shot 
away.  Nightfall  found  us  sitting  on  a  small  knoll  at  the  base 
of  So-shan-tse  hill  ;  it  had  rained  heavily.  There  was  no  pros- 
pect of  shelter  for  the  night.  Colonel  Philemonov  was  sitting 
wrapped  up  in  his  Caucasian  cloak,  tired  and  white  ;  he  was  in 
pain.  A  Cossack  had  been  sent  to  a  village  to  find  a  house  for 
us,  and  to  make  tea.  He  did  not  come  back,  and  Kislitski  and 
I  went  to  look  for  him.  We  came  to  a  house  in  the  village  of 
Moe-tung  and  found  a  number  of  soldiers  warming  themselves 
round  the  fire.  The  Cossack  said  there  was  no  accommodation, 
as  the  rooms  on  the  left  were  occupied  by  the  Japanese  prisoners, 
those  on  the  right  by  the  Russian  dead.  There  was  a  shed  in 
the  yard — and  he  pointed  to  it — full  of  refuse.  This  Cossack 
was  an  old  soldier  and  he  knew  his  man.  Kislitski  was  extra- 
ordinarily fastidious  about  cleanliness  and  food.  He  would 
rather  starve  than  eat  food  which  he  disliked,  and  stand  up  in 
the  rain  sooner  than  sleep  in  a  hovel.  Kislitski  went  away  in 
disgust.  I  stayed  and  warmed  myself  by  the  fire.  Soon  five 
or  six  officers  of  an  infantry  regiment  arrived,  hungry  and 
drenched.  The  Cossack  met  them  and  told  them  the  whole 
house  had  been  engaged  by  the  Commander  and  officers  of  the 
2nd  Transbaikalian  Battery,  who  would  presently  arrive,  and 
the  officers  went  away  disgusted. 

I  went  back  to  the  battery  on  the  knoll,  and  it  was  settled 
we  should  remain  where  we  were.  After  a  while  the  doctor 
and  Hliebnikov  asked  me  to  take  them  to  the  house  to  see  what 
could  be  done.  We  went  back  and  discovered  lights  burning 
in  a  room  we  had  not  been  shown  before,  and  there  the  Cossack 
and  his  friends  were  enjoying  a  plentiful  supper  of  cheese, 
sausages,  hot  tea,  and  a  bottle  of  vodka.  There  we  lay  down 
to  sleep,  but  not  for  long  ;  we  were  wakened  by  bullets  at  one 
in  the  morning.  The  Japanese  were  attacking  the  village.  I 
saddled  my  pony  and  made  for  my  battery,  but  lost  the  way. 
I  met  a  wounded  soldier  in  the  kowliang.  He  couldn't  walk. 
I  lifted  him  on  to  my  pony,  and  we  found  a  Red  Cross  Station 
in  a  Chinese  temple,  and  the  man  was  rebandaged.  We  moved 
slowly,  and  on  the  way  this  man  said  to  me :  "  Tell  me,  little 
father,  what  made  the  Japanese  so  angry  with  us  ?  "  ("  Po  chemu 
tak  rasserdilis  ?  ").  I  slept  in  the  yard  of  the  temple  on  some 
stones.     Firing  began  again  at  dawn,  and  I  soon  found  my  way 


BATTLES  291 

back  to  the  battery.  The  guns  were  where  they  had  been  the 
day  before,  but  they  pointed  west.  The  Colonel  and  Kislitski 
were  no  longer  on  the  big  hill,  but  on  the  top  of  the  smaller 
one,  at  the  foot  and  to  the  west  of  it.  The  Japanese  had 
partially  regained  in  the  night  the  ground  they  had  lost  in 
the  day.  They  had  got  the  range  of  our  battery.  One  man 
was  wounded  soon  after  I  arrived.  I  crossed  the  road  and 
climbed  the  small  hill.  What  a  short  time  that  takes  to  write, 
but  what  a  long  time  it  took  to  do  !  An  eternity.  I  went 
half-way  across,  came  back,  and  then  started  again.  I  thought 
every  shell  must  hit  me.  When  I  climbed  the  hill  and  found  the 
Colonel  and  Kislitski  I  felt  more  comfortable.  The  Japanese 
were  firing  at  us  from  a  battery  about  two  miles  off.  Shells 
sometimes  burst  on  the  road  and  in  front  of  us.  It  was 
the  first  time  I  had  been  under  shrapnel  fire.  The  first 
time  I  had  been  under  any  kind  of  fire  for  any  prolonged 
period.  The  Japanese  were  firing  both  shrapnel  and  shell  now. 
I  remember  time  passed  quickly,  as  if  someone  had  been 
turning  the  wheel  of  things  at  a  prodigious  unaccustomed 
rate.  I  heard  that  Hliebnikov  had  been  wounded  in  the  night 
and  sent  to  the  hospital.  I  stayed  on  the  knoll  till  one  o'clock. 
Then  there  was  a  pause.  I  left  the  knoll  and  sought  a  safer 
place  near  the  horses ;  then  I  went  to  see  what  was  happening 
elsewhere.  A  long  stream  of  wounded  men  was  flowing  to  the 
Red  Cross  Stations  and  from  there  to  Liaoyang.  The  noise 
was  louder  than  ever.  I  started  to  go  back  to  the  battery, 
and  met  one  of  the  officers,  who  told  me  it  had  been  moved. 
I  foolishly  believed  him.  I  learnt  afterwards  this  was  not  true  ; 
they  stayed  in  their  position  till  nine.  At  the  end  of  the  second 
day  the  Japanese  were  driven  back  two  miles  to  the  west.  On 
the  east  they  took  a  trench,  which  was  never  retaken.  Then 
came  the  news  of  Kuroki's  turning  movement.  On  the  follow- 
ing morning  Liaoyang,  with  its  triple  line  of  defences,  was  left  to 
defend  itself,  while  the  rest  of  the  army  crossed  the  river.  It 
was  neither  a  victory  nor  a  defeat  for  either  side. 

The  battle  was  over  but  not  the  fighting,  for  all  through 
the  night  of  the  31st  the  Japanese  attacked  the  forts.  A 
Cossack  officer,  who  was  in  one  of  them  told  me  that  the  sight 
was  terrible  ;  that  line  after  line  of  Japanese  came  smiling 
up  to  the  trenches  and  were  mown  down  till  the  trenches  were 
full  of  bodies,  and  then  more  came  on  over  the  bodies  of  the 


2Q2  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

dead.     One  of  the  officers  who  was  in  the  fort  went  mad  from 
horror. 

I  rode  back  towards  the  town  in  the  evening  ;  on  the 
way  I  met  Brooke,  who  had  been  with  General  Stackelberg. 
We  turned  back  to  watch  some  regiments  going  into  action 
towards  the  east,  and  then  we  rode  back  to  Liaoyang  with 
streams  of  ambulances,  stretchers,  and  wounded  men  walking 
on  foot.     The  terrible  noise  continued. 

I  thought  of  all  the  heroes  of  the  past,  from  the  Trojan  War 
onward,  and  of  the  words  which  those  who  have  not  fought  their 
country's  battles,  but  made  their  country's  songs,  have  said 
about  these  men  and  their  deeds,  and  I  asked  myself,  Is  that 
all  true  ?  Is  it  true  that  these  things  become  like  the  shining 
pattern  on  a  glorious  banner,  the  captain  jewels  of  a  great  crown, 
which  is  the  richest  heirloom  of  nations  ?  Or  is  all  this  an 
illusion  ?  Is  war  an  abominable  return  to  barbarism,  the 
emancipation  of  the  beast  in  man,  the  riot  of  all  that  is  bad, 
brutal,  and  hideous  ;  the  suspension  and  destruction  of  civilisa- 
tion by  its  very  means  and  engines  ;  and  are  those  songs  and 
those  words  which  stir  our  blood  merely  the  dreams  of  those 
who  have  been  resolutely  secluded  from  the  horrible  reality? 
And  then  I  thought  of  the  sublime  courage  of  Colonel 
Philemonov,  and  of  the  thousands  of  unknown  men  who  had 
fought  that  day  in  the  kowliang,  without  the  remotest  notion  of 
the  why  and  wherefore,  and  I  thought  that  war  is  to  man  what 
motherhood  is  to  woman — a  burden,  a  source  of  untold  suffering, 
and  yet  a  glory. 

After  the  battle  of  Liaoyang  there  followed  another  entr'acte. 
I  lost  my  battery  and  they  were  sent  north  to  rest.  I  arrived 
at  Mukden  on  2nd  September,  and  from  there  I  went  on  a  short 
expedition  to  General  Miskchenko's  Corps  with  M'Cullagh,  one  of 
the  correspondents.  Nothing  of  great  interest  happened  while 
I  was  there,  except  that  one  day  we  took  part  in  a  reconnaissance. 
Later,  I  paid  a  visit  to  a  corps  on  the  extreme  right,  near  Sin-min- 
tin,  about  twenty-six  miles  from  Mukden.  I  spent  a  week  there 
in  a  village  with  a  Colonel  who  commanded  a  Cavalry  Brigade. 
These  were  delicious  days.  The  landscape  was  rich  and  woody ; 
the  kowliang  had  been  reaped  ;  there  was  an  autumnal  haze  over 
the  landscape  and  a  subtle  chill  in  the  air  ;  the  leaves  were  not 
yet  brown,  and  there  were  no  signs  of  decay ;  but  the  dawns 
were  chilly  and  the  evenings  short.     One  of  the  officers  went 


BATTLES  293 

out  shooting  pheasants  with  his  retriever  every  afternoon. 
Wild  duck  used  to  fly  over  the  village  in  the  evening,  some- 
times wild  geese  as  well,  and  there  were  wild  duck  in  abund- 
ance on  a  reedy  lake  near  the  village.  Someone  here  had 
two  long  books  of  Dostoievsky  :  The  Idiot  and  The  Brothers 
Karamazov.  I  remember  devouring  them  both.  I  had  only 
read  Crime  and  Punishment  up  till  then,  and  these  two  books 
were  a  revelation.  I  got  back  to  Mukden  at  the  beginning 
of  October,  and  at  the  railway  station  I  met  an  officer  belonging 
to  the  battery,  who  told  me  they  had  just  arrived  from  the  north. 
I  found  them  near  the  station,  and  there  I  met  all  my  old  friends. 
They  had  been  right  up  to  Kuan-chen-tse  and  then  to  Harbin 
and  back.  The  Colonel  was  still  an  invalid  and  in  bed.  We 
moved  from  a  cold  field,  where  we  were  under  canvas,  into  a 
temple,  or  rather  a  house  inhabited  by  a  Buddhist  priest,  and 
enjoyed  two  days  of  perfect  calm.  The  building  consisted  of 
three  quadrangles  surrounded  by  a  high  stone  wall.  The  first 
of  the  quadrangles  was  like  a  farmyard.  There  was  a  lot  of 
straw  lying  about,  some  broken  ploughshares,  buckets,  wooden 
bowls,  spades,  hoes,  and  other  furniture  of  toil.  A  few  hens 
hurried  about  searching  for  grain  here  and  there  ;  a  dog  was 
sleeping  in  the  sun.  At  the  farther  end  of  the  yard  a  cat  seemed 
to  have  set  aside  a  space  for  its  private  use.  This  farmyard 
was  separated  from  the  next  quadrangle  by  the  house  of  the 
priest,  which  occupied  the  whole  of  the  second  enclosure;  that 
is  to  say,  the  living-rooms  extended  right  round  the  quadrangle, 
leaving  an  open  space  in  the  centre.  The  part  of  the  house 
which  separated  the  second  quadrangle  from  the  next  con- 
sisted solely  of  a  roof  supported  by  pillars,  making  an  open 
verandah,  through  which,  from  the  second  enclosure,  you  could 
see  into  the  third.  The  third  enclosure  was  a  garden  with  a 
square  grass  plot  and  some  cypress  trees.  At  the  farthest  end 
of  the  garden  was  the  temple  itself — a  small  pagoda,  full  of 
carved  and  painted  idols. 

When  we  arrived  here  the  priest  welcomed  OS  and  estab- 
lished us  in  rooms  in  the  second  quadrangle.  The  Cossacks 
encamped  in  a  field  on  the  other  side  of  the  farmyard,  but  the 
treasure-chest  was  put  in  the  farmyard  itself,  and  a  sentry  stood 
near  it  with  a  drawn  sword.  A  child  moved  about  the  place. 
He  was  elegantly  dressed.  His  little  1  \.  twinkled  like  onyxes, 
and    his   hands   were   beautifully   shaped.     This   child    moved 


294  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

about  the  farmyard  with  the  dignity  of  an  emperor  and  the 
serenity  of  a  great  pontiff.  Gravely  and  without  a  smile  he 
watched  the  Cossacks  unharnessing  their  horses,  lighting  a  fire, 
and  arranging  the  officers'  kit.  He  walked  up  to  the  sentry, 
who  was  standing  near  the  treasure-chest,  a  big,  grey-eyed 
Cossack,  with  a  great  tuft  of  fair  hair,  and  the  expression  of  a 
faithful  retriever,  and  said  :  "  Ping  !  "  in  a  tone  of  indescribable 
contempt.  "  Ping  "  in  Chinese  means  soldier-man,  and  if  one 
wishes  to  express  contempt  for  a  man  there  is  no  word  in  the 
whole  of  the  Chinese  language  which  does  it  so  effectually.  The 
Cossack  smiled  on  the  child  and  called  him  by  every  kind  of 
endearing  diminutive,  but  he  took  no  notice  and  retired  into  the 
inner  part  of  the  house.  The  next  day  curiosity  got  the  better 
of  him,  and  one  of  the  Cossacks — his  name  was  Lieskov,  and  he 
looked  after  my  mule — made  friends  with  him  by  playing  with 
the  dog.  The  dog  was  dirty  and  distrustful  and  not  used  to 
being  played  with.  He  was  too  thin  to  be  eaten.  But  Lieskov 
tamed  this  dog  and  taught  him  how  to  play,  and  the  big  Cossack 
used  to  roll  on  the  ground,  while  the  dog  pretended  to  bite  him. 
I  remember  coming  home  that  same  afternoon  from  a  short 
stroll  with  one  of  the  officers,  and  we  found  Lieskov  fast  asleep 
in  the  yard  across  the  steps  of  the  door,  and  the  Chinese  child 
and  the  dog  were  sitting  next  to  him.  We  woke  up  Lieskov, 
and  the  officer  asked  him  why  he  had  gone  to  sleep.  "  I  was 
playing  with  the  dog,"  he  said,  "  and  I  played  so  hard  that  I 
was  exhausted  and  fell  asleep." 

There  was  something  infinitely  quiet  and  beautiful  in  that 
temple,  with  its  enclosures  of  trees  and  grass,  bathed  in  the 
October  sunshine.  The  time  we  spent  there  seemed  very  long 
and  very  short,  like  a  pleasant  dream.  The  weather  was  so 
soft  and  fine,  the  sunshine  so  bright,  that  had  not  the  nights 
been  chilly  we  should  never  have  dreamt  it  was  autumn.  It 
seemed  rather  as  if  the  spring  had  been  unburied  and  had 
returned  to  earth  by  mistake.  I  remember  one  of  the  officers 
saying :  "  Thank  Heavens  we  were  in  the  deepest  reserve." 
We  seemed  to  be  sheltered  from  the  world  in  an  island  of  dreamy 
lotus-eating  ;  and  the  only  noise  that  reached  us  was  the  sound 
of  the  tinkling  gongs  of  the  temple.  We  lived  a  life  of  absolute 
indolence,  getting  up  with  the  sun,  eating,  playing  cards, 
strolling  about  on  the  plains,  whence  the  millet  had  been  reaped, 
eating  again,  and  going  to  bed  about  nine.     Then  the  calm  was 


BATTLES  295 

suddenly  broken,  and  we  received  orders  to  start  for  the  front 
and  join  the  First  European  Corps,  which  formed  part  of  the 
reserve. 

We  started  for  the  front  on  the  afternoon  of  the  6th  of 
October,  and  we  did  not  reach  any  place  where  fighting  was 
going  on  till  the  12th.  Those  intervening  days  were  spent 
in  marches  and  halts  in  Chinese  villages.  At  one  of  our  halting- 
places  I  was  billeted  with  Kislitski,  who  always  lived  apart, 
as  he  could  not  bear  the  public  life  and  the  public  food  of  a  mess. 
He  sat  up  all  one  night  making  a  mysterious  implement  of 
wood,  something  to  do  with  rectifying  the  angle  of  sight  of  the 
guns,  and  singing  to  himself  passages  from  Lermontov's  poem, 
"  The  Demon,"  as  he  worked. 

On  the  evening  of  the  nth  we  arrived  at  a  Chinese  village, 
where  to  the  south  of  us  there  was  a  range  of  hills  which  con- 
tinued like  a  herring-bone  right  on  to  Yantai.  In  these  hills  a 
desperate  battle  was  going  on.  The  battle  was  drawing  nearer 
to  us,  and  we  were  drawing  nearer  to  the  battle.  Firing  went 
on  all  night.  The  next  day,  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
artillery  fire  began,  and  from  a  small  hill  in  front  of  our  position 
I  got  a  splendid  view  of  the  fighting.  The  kowliang  was  reaped, 
and  one  could  see  to  the  east  successive  ranges  of  brown  un- 
dulating hills,  and  to  the  west  a  plain  black  with  little  dots  of 
infantry.  In  the  extreme  distance,  to  the  south-west  of  the 
hill  on  which  I  stood,  were  the  hills  of  Yantai.  On  a  higher 
hill  in  front  of  that  on  which  I  was  standing  the  infantry  was 
taking  up  its  position,  and  the  Japanese  shrapnel  was  falling 
on  it.  The  infantry  retired  and  moved  to  the  south-west,  and 
it  looked  at  first  as  if  there  was  going  to  be  a  general  retreat. 

The  firing  went  on  without  interruption  until  ten  minutes 
to  seven  in  the  evening.  In  the  night  it  rained  heavily  ;  the 
noise  of  thunder  was  as  loud  as  the  noise  of  the  guns.  News 
of  terrific  fighting  kept  on  arriving — a  battery  was  lost  and 
a  regiment  cut  up,  and  the  wounded  began  to  stream  past  our 
camp.     Rifle  fire  went  on  all  night. 

The  next  morning  punctually  at  half-past  six  the  guns 
began  once  more.  The  battle  had  got  still  nearer.  The  shells 
were  falling  closer  and  closer.  I  turned  round  and  siw  through 
my  field-glasses  that  our  camp  was  astir.  I  ran  back  and  was 
met  by  my  Buriat  servant,  who  was  leading  my  pony.  Shells 
began  to  fall  on  the  hill  where  I  had  been  standing.     It  was 


296  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

half-past  eight  in  the  morning,  and  we  were  just  ready  and 
expecting  to  start  when  we  were  told  to  remain  where  we  were. 
The  shelling  stopped.     A  little  before  one  o'clock  a  regiment 
of  the  First  Corps  which  was  in  front  of  us  were  told  to  retreat. 
It  was  said  that  the  enemy  was  beginning  to  turn  our  right 
flank.     The  battery  were  ordered  to  fire  on  a  Japanese  battery 
to  the  south-west,  to  cover  the  retreat  of  a  Russian  field  battery. 
The  battery  went  into  action  at  twenty  minutes  to  three. 
The  guns  were  masked  behind  the  houses  of  the  village,  and 
Colonel  Philemonov  climbed  up  a  high  tree,  so  as  to  get  a  better 
view.     Knowing  how  ill  he  was  and  that  he  might  have  a 
paroxysm  of  pain  at  any  moment,  my  blood  ran  cold.     He  could 
not  see  well  enough  from  the  tree,  and  he  moved  up  the  slope  of 
the  hill.     He  began  to  give  out  the  range,  but  after  two  rounds 
had  been  fired  he  fell  almost  unconscious  to  the  ground,  and 
Kislitski  took  over. 

The  Japanese  were  firing  Shimose  shells.     We  saw  a  torn 
mass  of  a  tree  or  kowliang  scattered  into  fragments  by  the 
explosion  of  a  shell.     But  when  at  three  o'clock  we  left  the 
position  we  saw  it  was  not  kowliang  nor  a  tree  that  had  been 
blown  up,   but  a  man.     We  took  up  our  position  on  another 
and  higher  hill,  and  the  battery  fired  west,  at  the  farthest  possible 
range,  on  the  Japanese  infantry,  which  we  could  see  moving 
in  that  direction  against  the  horizon.     This  lasted  till  sunset. 
At  dusk  we  marched  into  a  village.     The  infantry  was  lying  in 
trenches  ready  for  the  night  attack.     Some  of  the  men  had 
been  killed  by  shells,  and  at  the  edge  of  a  trench  I  saw  two 
human  hands.     The  next  morning  the  noise  of  firing  began  at 
four  o'clock.     We  moved  into  a  road  and  waited  for  the  dawn. 
It  was  dark.     The  firing  seemed  to  be  close  by.     The  Cossacks 
made  a  fire  and  cooked  bits  of  meat  on  a  stick.     At  dawn,  news 
came  that  the  assault  of  the  enemy  had  been  repulsed  and  that 
we  were  to  join  later  on  in  an  attack.     The  Colonel  went  to 
look  for  a  suitable  position.     I  went  with  him.     From  the  top 
of  a  high  hill  we  could  see  through  a  glass  the  Japanese  infantry 
climbing  a  hill  immediately  south  of  our  former  camp.     The 
Japanese  climbed  the  hill,  lay  down,  and  fired  on  the  Russian 
infantry  to  the  east  of  them.     The  Russians  were  screened  from 
our  sight   by  another  hill.     The  battery  fired  at  first   from 
the  foot  of  the  hill,  and  the  enemy  answered  back  from  the  east 
and  the  west.     We  had  to  move  to  a  position  on  a  hill  farther 


BATTLES  297 

north,  whence  we  fired  <>n  a  battery  three  mile  "it.  The 
battery   went    into   action   at    eight.      Colonel    Philemonov, 

Kislitski,  and  I  lay  on  the  turf  at  the  top  of  the  hill.  Kislitski 
gave  the  range.  The  Colonel  had  begun  to  do  it  himself,  but 
had  fallen  back  exhausted.  "  I  love  my  business,"  he  said  to 
me,  "  and  now  that  I  get  a  chance  of  doing  it,  I  can't.  All  the 
same,  they  know  I'm  here."  About  an  hour  after  the  battery 
had  begun  to  fire,  the  Japanese  infantry  came  round  through 
the  valley  and  occupied  a  hill  to  the  north-west  of  us,  and 
opened  fire  first  on  our  infantry,  which  was  beneath  us  and  in 
front  of  us,  and  then  on  the  battery.  The  sergeant  came  and 
reported  that  men  were  being  wounded  and  horses  had  been 
killed:  an  officer  called  Takmakov,  who  had  just  joined  the 
battery,  was  wounded.  The  Japanese  infantry  were  1200 
yards  from  us.  Three  of  the  guns  were  then  reversed  and  fired 
on  the  infantry.  This  went  on  till  noon.  You  could  see  the 
Japanese  without  a  glass.  With  a  glass  one  could  have  recog- 
nised a  friend.  At  noon  the  infantry  retired,  and  we  were  left 
unprotected,  and  had  to  retreat  at  full  speed  under  shrapnel 
and  infantry  fire.  My  pony  was  not  anywhere  near.  I  had 
to  run.  The  Colonel  saw  this  and  shouted  to  the  men  to  give 
me  a  horse,  and  a  Cossack  brought  me  a  riderless  horse,  which 
was  difficult  to  climb  on  to,  as  it  had  a  high  Cossack  saddle  and 
all  a  Cossack's  belongings  on  it. 

We  crossed  the  river  Sha-ho,  and  just  as  everyone  was 
expecting  a  general  retreat  to  Mukden,  we  were  told  to  recross 
the  river.  It  began  to  rain.  As  we  crossed  the  river,  one 
of  the  horses  had  the  front  of  its  face  torn  off  by  shrapnel. 
We  took  up  a  position  on  the  other  side  of  the  river  ;  the  first 
few  shots  of  the  enemy  fell  with  alarming  precision  on  the 
battery,  but  the  Japanese  altered  the  range,  and  their  shell> 
fell  wide.  Twenty  minutes  later  the  encmy'>  lire  (rased  all 
along  the  line.  Afterwards  we  knew  that  the  reason  why  it 
ceased  was  because  the  Japanese  had  run  short  of  ammunition. 
Kidit^ki  and  I  walked  towards  the  south  to  see  what  was  going 
on.  We  climbed  to  the  top  of  an  isolated  cottage,  but  could 
see  nothing.  Then  we  came  back,  and  tin-  battery  set  out  for 
a  village  south-west   by  a  circuitous  route  .  the  river. 

Nobody  knew  the  way.  We  marched  and  marched  until  it 
grew  dark.  The  Colonel  was  in  great  pain.  Some  Cossacks 
and  Chinese  were  sent  to  find  the  village.     We  halted  for  an 


298  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

hour  by  a  wet  ploughed  field.  At  last  they  came  backhand  led 
us  to  the  village.  We  expected  to  find  the  transport  there. 
I  was  hoping  to  find  dry  clothing  and  hot  food,  as  we  were 
drenched  to  the  skin  and  half-dead  with  hunger  and  fatigue. 
When  we  arrived  at  the  village  I  was  alone  with  one  of  the 
officers  ;  we  dismounted  at  a  bivouac,  and  the  officer  went  on 
ahead,  expecting  me  to  follow  him.  I  thought  he  was  to  come 
back  for  me.  I  waited  an  hour  ;  nobody  came  ;  so  I  started 
to  look  for  our  quarters.  The  village  was  straggling  and  mazy. 
I  went  into  house  after  house,  and  only  found  strange  faces.  At 
last  I  got  a  Cossack  to  guide  me,  and,  after  half  an  hour  spent 
in  fruitless  search,  we  found  the  house  and  the  officers,  but 
no  transport,  no  food,  and  no  dry  clothing.  I  gave  way  to 
temper,  and  was  publicly  congratulated  by  the  battery  for  doing 
so.  They  said  that  it  was  the  first  time  I  had  manifested  dis- 
content in  public. 

I  spent  the  night  in  the  Colonel's  quarters,  and  we  discussed 
Russian  literature :  Dostoievsky,  Gogol,  and  Dickens.  He 
was  surprised  at  a  foreigner  being  able  to  appreciate  the  humour 
of  Gogol.  I  was  surprised  at  a  foreigner,  I  told  him,  being 
able  to  appreciate  the  humour  of  Dickens. 

At  dawn  we  received  orders  to  hold  ourselves  ready.  Half 
an  hour  later  we  were  told  to  join  the  First  Siberian  Corps, 
which  had  been  sent  south  to  attack. 

We  marched  to  a  village  called  Nan-chin-tsa,  not  far  from  a 
hill  which  the  Russians  called  Poutilov's  Hill,  and  which  the 
English  called  Lonely  Tree  Hill.  It  had  been  taken  in  the 
night  by  the  Japanese.  Through  a  glass  you  could  see  men 
walking  on  it,  but  nobody  knew  if  they  were  Russians  or 
Japanese.  Two  Cossacks  were  sent  to  find  out.  Wounded 
men  were  returning  one  by  one,  and  in  bigger  batches,  from 
every  part  of  the  field.  It  was  a  brilliant  sunshiny  day,  and  the 
wounded  seemed  to  rise  in  a  swarm  from  the  earth.  It  was  a 
ghastly  sight,  even  worse  than  at  Liaoyang.  The  bandages 
were  fresh,  and  the  blood  was  soaking  through  the  shirts  of  the 
men.  The  Cossacks  came  back  and  reported  that  the  hill  was 
occupied  by  the  Japanese.  We  marched  back  another  verst 
(two-thirds  of  a  mile)  and  found  the  corps  bivouacking  in  the 
plain.  All  along  the  road  we  met  wounded  and  mutilated  men, 
some  carried  on  stretchers  and  some  walking,  their  wounds  fresh 
and  streaming.     We  marched  another  verst  south  again,  and 


BATTLES  299 

the  guns  were  placed  behind  the  village  oi  Fun-chu-Lin^, 
two  miles  north  of  the  hill  to  which  General  Poutilov  gave  his 
name.  On  the  way  we  met  General  Poutilov  himself  and  the 
infantry  going  into  action.  Colon  1 1  1'hilcmonov  and  I  climbed 
up  on  to  the  thatched  roof  of  a  small  house,  whence  he  gave  the 
range.  Kislitski  was  not  there.  In  front  of  us  was  a  road  ;  our 
house  was  at  the  extreme  right  corner  of  the  village  ;  to  the 
right  of  us  was  a  field  planted  with  lettuce  and  green  vegetables. 
Infantry  were  marching  along  the  road  on  their  way  into  action. 
A  company  halted  in  the  field  and  began  eating  the  lettuce. 
The  Colonel  shouted  :  '  You  had  better  make  haste  finishing 
the  green  stuff  there,  children,  as  I  am  going  to  open  fire." 
They  hurriedly  made  off,  as  if  they  were  to  be  the  target,  except 
one  who,  greedier  than  the  rest,  lingered  a  little  behind  the 
others,  throwing  furtive  glances  at  the  Colonel  lest  he  should 
suddenly  fire  on  them.  The  guns  were  in  a  field  behind  us, 
and  immediately  under  the  house  where  we  were  perched, 
two  Chinamen,  who  had  been  working  in  the  fields,  had  made 
themselves  a  dug-out,  and  towards  tea-time  they  appeared  from 
the  earth,  made  tea,  and  then  crept  back  again.  The  battery 
opened  fire,  and  two  other  batteries  shelled  the  hill,  one  from  the 
east  and  one  from  the  west.  The  enemy  answered  with  shrapnel, 
but  not  one  of  these  shells  touched  us ;  they  all  fell  beyond  us. 
A  little  while  later,  three  belated  men  belonging  to  a 
line  regiment  walked  along  the  road.  Our  guns  fired  a  salvo, 
upon  which  these  men,  startled  out  of  their  lives,  crouched 
down.  The  Colonel  shouted  to  them  from  the  roof:  "Crouch 
lower  or  else  you  will  be  shot."  They  flung  themselves  on 
the  road  and  grovelled  in  the  dust.  "Lower!"  shouted 
the  Colonel.  "Can't  you  get  under  the  earth?"  They 
wriggled  ineffectually,  and  lay  sprawling  like  brown  fish  out 
of  water.  Then  the  Colonel  said:  "You  ought  to  be  ashamed 
of  yourselves.  Don't  you  know  my  shells  are  falling  three 
versts  from  here?  Be  off  1  "  At  sunset  the  battery  ceased 
fire.  Soon  a  tremendous  rattle  told  us  the  infantry  attack  had 
begun.  An  officer  described  this  afterwards  as  a  "  comb  of 
tire."  We  w.iited  in  the  dark-red,  solemn  twilight,  and  later  a 
ringing  cheer  told  us  the  hill  had  been  taken.  Someone  who 
was  with  us  said  it  was  just  like  manoeuvres.  But  ill  was  not 
over,  as  the  Japanese  counter-attacked  twice.  The  hill  was 
partly  taken,  but  at  what  cost  we  were  presently  to  see. 


300  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

It  grew  dark  ;  we  sought  and  found  a  Chinese  house  to  pass 
the  night  in.  Men  began  to  arrive  from  the  hill,  and  from  their 
account  it  was  difficult  to  tell  whether  the  hill  had  been  taken  or 
not.  The  Colonel  told  Hliebnikov  to  ride  to  the  hill  and  find 
out.  Hliebnikov  said  to  me  :  "  He  is  sending  me  to  be  shot 
like  a  dog."  We  were  just  lying  down  to  rest  when  a  wounded 
man  arrived  asking  to  be  bandaged,  then  another  and  another. 

The  doctor  of  the  battery  was  with  us.  The  nearest  Red 
Cross  Station  was  eight  miles  off.  Soon  the  house  was  full  of 
wounded,  and  more  were  arriving.  They  lay  on  the  floor,  on  the 
K'angs,  on  every  available  place.  The  room  was  lit  by  one  candle 
and  a  small  Chinese  oil-lamp.  The  men  had  been  wounded 
by  bullets  and  bayonets  ;  they  were  torn,  mangled,  soaked 
in  blood.  Some  of  them  had  broken  limbs.  Some  of  them  had 
walked  or  crawled  two  miles  from  the  hill,  while  others,  unable 
to  move,  had  been  carried  on  greatcoats  slung  on  rifles.  When 
one  house  was  full  we  went  to  the  next,  and  so  on,  till  all  the 
houses  in  the  street  of  the  village  were  filled.  Two  of  the 
officers  bandaged  the  slightly  wounded,  while  the  doctor  dealt 
with  the  severer  wounds.  The  appalling  part  of  the  business 
was,  that  one  had  to  turn  out  of  the  house  by  force  men  who 
were  only  slightly  wounded  or  simply  exhausted.  Some  of 
them  merely  asked  to  be  allowed  to  rest  a  moment  and  drink 
a  cup  of  tea,  and  yet  they  had  to  be  turned  ruthlessly  from  the 
door,  to  make  room  for  the  ever-increasing  mass  of  maimed  and 
mangled  men  who  were  crying  out  in  their  pain.  As  a  rule  the 
wounded  soldiers  bore  their  wounds  with  astonishing  fortitude, 
but  the  wounded  I  am  speaking  of  were  so  terribly  mangled 
that  many  of  them  were  screaming  in  their  agony.  Two  officers 
were  brought  in.  "  Don't  bother  about  us,  Doctor,"  they  said  ; 
'  we  shall  be  all  right."  We  laid  these  two  officers  down  on 
the  K'ang.  They  seemed  fairly  comfortable  ;  one  of  them  said 
he  felt  cold  ;  and  the  other  that  the  calf  of  his  leg  tingled. 
'  Would  I  mind  rubbing  it  ?  "  I  lifted  it  as  gently  as  I  could, 
but  it  hurt  him  terribly  ;  and  then  I  rubbed  his  leg,  which  he 
said  gave  him  relief.  '  What  are  you  ?  "  he  said — "  an  inter- 
preter, or  what  ?  '  (I  had  scarcely  got  on  any  clothes  ;  what 
they  were,  were  Chinese  and  covered  with  dirt.)  I  said  I  was 
a  correspondent.  He  was  about  to  give  me  something,  whether 
it  was  a  tip  or  a  small  present  as  a  remembrance  I  shall  never 
know,  for  the  other  officer  stopped  him  and  said :  "  No,  no, 


BATTLES  301 

you're  mistaken."  He  then  thanked  me.  Half  an  hour  later 
he  died.  One  seemed  to  be  plunged  into  the  lowest  inferno  of 
human  pain.  I  met  a  man  in  the  street  who  had  crawled  on 
all-fours  the  whole  way  from  the  hill.  The  stret  hers  were  all 
being  used.  The  way  in  which  the  doctor  dealt  with  the  men 
was  magnificent.  He  dominated  the  situation,  enmuraged 
everyone,  had  the  right  answer,  suppressed  the  unruly,  and 
cheered  those  who  needed  <  lnering  up. 

Each  house  was  so  small,  the  accommodation  in  it  so  scanty, 
that  it  took  a  short  time  to  fill,  and  we  were  constantly  moving 
from  one  house  to  another.  The  floor  was  in  every  case  so 
densely  packed  with  writhing  bodies  that  one  stumbled  over 
them  in  the  darkness.  Some  of  the  men  were  sick  from  pain  ; 
others  had  faces  that  had  no  human  semblance  at  all.  Horrible 
as  the  sight  was,  the  piteousness  of  it  was  greater  still.  The 
men  were  touching  in  their  thankfulness  for  any  little  attention, 
and  noble  in  the  manner  they  bore  their  sufferings.  We  had 
tea  and  cigarette-  fur  the  wounded. 

1  was  holding  up  a  man  who  had  been  terribly  mangled  in 
the  legs  by  a  bayonet.  The  doctor  was  bandaging  him.  He 
screamed  with  pain.  The  doctor  said  the  screaming  upset  him. 
I  asked  the  man  to  try  not  to  scream,  and  lit  a  cigarette  and 
put  it  in  his  mouth.  He  stopped  immediately  and  smoked, 
and  remained  quite  still — until  his  socks  were  taken  off.  The 
men  scarcely  ever  had  socks  ;  their  feet  were  swathed  in  a  white 
bandage,  a  kind  of  linen  puttee.  This  man  had  socks,  and 
when  they  were  taken  off  he  cried,  saying  he  would  never  see 
them  again.  I  promised  to  keep  them  for  him,  and  he  said: 
"  Thank  you,  my  protector."     A  little  later  he  died. 

When  we  gave  the  soldiers  tea  or  cigarettes,  they  made  the 
sign  of  the  Cross  and  thanked  Heaven  before  they  thanked  us. 

One  seemed  to  have  before  one  the  symbol  of  the  whole 
suffering  of  the  human  race  :  men  dike  bewildered  children, 
stricken  by  some  unknown  force  for  some  unexplained  reason, 
crying  out  and  sobbing  in  their  anguish,  yet  accepting  and  not 
railing  against  their  destiny,  and  grateful  for  the  slightest 
alleviation  and  help  to  them  in  their  distress. 

We  stayed  till  all  the  houses  were  full  ;  at  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning  a  detachment  of  the  Red  Cro^  arrived,  but  they 
had  their  hands  full  to  overflowing.  We  went  to  snatch  a  little 
sleep.     We  had  in  the  meantime  heard  that  the  hill  had  1 


302  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

taken,  and  that  at  dawn  the  next  day  we  were  to  proceed 
thither. 

Before  dawn  I  had  some  food  in  the  Colonel's  room.  While 
I  was  there,  he  sent  for  the  doctor.  "  I  hear,"  he  said,  "  that 
you  used  our  bandages  for  the  wounded  who  came  in  last  night." 
The  doctor  said  this  was  so.  "  You  had  no  business  to  do 
that,"  said  the  Colonel.  "  I  am  expecting  severe  fighting  to- 
day, and  if  my  men  are  wounded  I  shall  have  no  bandages  for 
them."  The  doctor  said  nothing.  He  knew  this  was  true;  every 
bandage  had  been  used.  "  I  strictly  forbid  you  to  do  anything 
of  the  kind  again,"  said  the  Colonel.  The  doctor  saluted  and 
went  out.  He  at  once  rode  to  the  nearest  Red  Cross  Station, 
and  came  back  with  a  provision  of  bandages  later  in  the  morning. 

At  dawn  we  started  for  Lonely  Tree  Hill,  trotting  all  the 
way.  The  road  was  covered  with  bandages  ;  the  dead  were 
lying  about  here  and  there  ;  but  when  we  arrived  at  the  hill 
the  spectacle  was  appalling.  I  was  the  only  foreigner  who  was 
allowed  to  visit  the  hill  that  day.  As  the  Colonel  rode  up  the 
hill  we  passed  the  body  of  a  Japanese  soldier  which  lay  waxen 
and  stiff  on  the  side  of  the  road,  and  suddenly  began  to  move. 
The  hill  was  littered  with  corpses.  Six  hundred  Japanese  dead 
were  buried  that  day,  and  I  do  not  know  how  many  Russians. 
The  corpses  lay  in  the  dawn,  with  their  white  faces  and  staring 
eyes  like  hateful  waxwork  figures.  Even  death  seemed  to  be 
robbed  of  its  majesty  and  made  hideous  and  bedraggled  by  the 
fingers  of  war.  But  not  entirely.  Kislitski,  who  was  with  me, 
pointed  to  a  dead  Japanese  officer  who  was  lying  on  his  back, 
and  told  me  to  look  at  his  expression.  He  was  lying  with  his 
brown  eyes  wide  open  and  showing  his  white  teeth.  But  there 
was  nothing  grim  or  ghastly  in  that  smile.  It  was  miraculously 
beautiful  ;  it  was  not  the  smile  of  inscrutable  content  which 
we  see  on  certain  statues  of  sleeping  warriors  such  as  that  of 
Gaston  de  Foix  at  Milan,  or  Guidarello  Guidarelli  at  Ravenna, 
but  a  smile  of  radiant  joy  and  surprise,  as  if  he  had  suddenly 
met  with  a  friend  for  whom  he  had  longed,  above  all  things, 
at  a  moment  when  of  all  others  he  had  needed  him,  but  for 
whose  arrival  he  had  not  even  dared  to  hope.  Near  him  a 
Russian  boy  was  lying,  fair  and  curly-headed,  with  his  head 
resting  on  one  arm,  as  if  he  had  fallen  asleep  like  a  tired  child 
overcome  with  insuperable  weariness,  and  had  opened  his  eyes 
to  pray  to  be  left  at  peace  just  a  little  longer. 


BATTLES  303 

The  trenches  and  the  ground  were  littered  with  all  the  belong- 
ings of  the  Japanese  :  rifles,  ammunition,  bayonets,  leather  cases, 
field-glasses,  scarlet  socks,  dark-blue  greatcoats,  yellow  caps, 
maps,  painting-brushes,  tablets  of  Indian  ink,  soap,  tooth- 
brushes, envelopes  full  of  little  black  pills,  innumerable  note- 
books, and  picture  postcards,  received  and  ready  for  sending. 
Some  of  the  Japanese  dead  wore  crosses.  One  had  a  piece  of  green 
ribbon  sewn  in  a  little  bag  hanging  round  his  neck.  One  had 
been  shot  through  a  postcard  which  he  wore  next  to  his  heart. 

I  saw  a  Russian  soldier  terribly  wounded  just  as  he  had 
begun  to  eat  his  luncheon  in  the  shelter  of  the  hill.  So 
many  men  were  buried  that  day  that  the  men  were  faint  and 
nauseated  by  the  work  of  burying  the  dead.  The  battk-  was 
over,  and  now  there  were  only  daily  short  periods  of  mutual 
shelling.  We  lived  all  day  on  the  hill,  and  we  slept  in  a  broken- 
down  house  at  the  foot  of  one  end  of  it.  There  were  no  windows 
in  this  house,  and  the  doors  had  to  be  used  for  fuel.  The  nights 
were  piercingly  cold.  The  place  was  full  of  insects,  and  we  were 
covered  with  lice.  I  lived  for  a  week  on  the  top  of  this  hill 
without  anything  of  particular  interest  happening,  and  on  the 
30th  of  October  I  left  with  Colonel  Philemonov,  who  had  been 
ordered  to  Russia  by  the  doctors.  He  had  been  getting  worse, 
and  could  scarcely  move  from  his  bed.  In  spite  of  this  he 
would  get  up  from  time  to  time  and,  muffled  in  a  cloak,  go  up 
to  the  top  of  the  hill. 

He  was  given  the  St.  George's  Cross  for  the  battle  of  the 
Sha-ho. 

As  we  rode  away  he  told  me  how  he  had  lived  with  his  men 
and  regarded  them  as  his  children,  and  that  it  broke  his  heart 
to  go  away.  He  was  a  man  of  forbidding  exterior,  with  rather 
a  grim  manner  ;  he  frightened  some  people,  but  he  was  refined 
and  cultivated,  with  a  quiet  sense  of  humour,  the  embodiment 
of  unaffected  courage  and  calm  devotion  to  duty.  The  men 
worshipped  him.  The  officers  admired  him,  but  I  remember 
one  day  when  I  rejoined  the  battery  the  following  year  a  dis- 
cussion at  the  Mr>s,  when  the  doctor  said  that  although  he 
admired  Philemonov  immensely,  he  thought  a  good-natured 
officer,  whom  we  had  all  known,  who  used  frankly  to  go  to  the 
base  whenever  there  was  ;i  chance  of  fighting,  was  superior  as 
a  man,  a  better  man,  and  to  my  astonishment  most  of  the 
officers  agreed  with  him. 


304  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

One  curious  trait  about  Philemonov  was  that  he  was  in- 
finitely indulgent  to  clever  scamps,  if  they  amused  him,  and 
rather  unfair  towards  conscientious  dullards.  He  punished, 
as  some  poet  says  somewhere,  the  just  unwise  more  hardly  than 
the  wise  unjust,  and  he  liked  being  bluffed,  and  although  he 
wasn't  really  taken  in,  he  was  indulgent,  more  than  indulgent, 
to  a  successful  piece  of  bluff.  I  arrived  at  Mukden  on  the  31st 
of  October,  and  the  battery  returned  on  the  4th  of  November 
to  repair  the  guns.  We  lived  once  more  in  the  temple  outside 
the  city  walls.  The  autumn  had  come  and  gone.  It  was 
winter.  There  had  been  no  autumn,  but  a  long  summer  and 
an  Indian  summer  of  warm,  hazy  days.  One  day  the  trees 
were  still  green,  and  the  next  the  leaves  had  disappeared.  The 
sky  became  grey,  the  snow  fell,  and  the  wind  cut  like  a  knife. 
The  exquisite  outlines  of  the  country  now  appeared  in  all  their 
beauty.  The  rare  trees  with  their  frail  fretwork  of  branches 
stood  out  in  dark  and  intricate  patterns  against  the  rosy  haze 
of  the  wintry  sunset,  softened  with  innumerable  particles  of 
brown  dust,  and  one  realised  whence  Chinese  artists  drew  their 
inspiration,  and  how  the  "  Cunning  worker  in  Pekin  "  pricked 
on  to  porcelain  the  colours  and  designs  which  make  Oriental 
china  so  beautiful  and  precious.  In  the  meantime  I  heard 
from  the  Morning  Post  that  they  no  longer  wanted  a  corre- 
spondent in  Manchuria,  so  I  decided  to  go  home.  Had  I  waited 
a  few  days  longer,  I  could  have  remained  correspondent  for  the 
Standard,  but  this  I  did  not  know  till  it  was  too  late.  I  stayed 
at  Mukden  till  the  1st  of  December,  when  I  started  for  London. 


CHAPTER    XVI 
LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA 

DURING  the  summer  of  1905  I  did  a  certain  amount  of 
dramatic  criticism  for  the  Morning  Post.  I  wrote 
notices  on  some  of  the  foreign  plays  that  were  being 
given  in  London  during  that  summer.  Several  foreign  com- 
panies were  with  us.  Duse  had  a  season  at  the  Waldorf  Theatre  ; 
Coquelin  played  in  L 'Abbe  Constantin,  rather  a  tiresome,  goody- 
goody  play;  Sarah  Bernhardt  produced  Victor  Hugo's  Angelo, 
I'Aiglon,  Pcllias  et  Mclisandc  (with  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell), 
Phidrc,  and  Adrienne  Lccouvreur,  not  Scribe  and  Legouve's 
play,  but  a  play  of  her  own. 

I  saw  Duse  display  the  full  range  of  her  powers  in  Alexandre 
Dumas  Ills'  La  Fcmmc  de  Claude  ;  Goldoni's  La  Locandicra  ; 
Dumas'  Unc  VisiU  de  Noccs,  La  Dame  aux  Camillas,  Adrienne 
Lecouvrcur ;  and  D'Annunzio's  Gioconda  ;  Sardou's  Odette  and 
Fedora. 

The  most  interesting  of  these  performances  was,  I  think,  her 
Cesarine  in  La  Fetntne  de  Claude.  Duse  was  blamed  for  ap- 
pearing in  a  repertory  of  such  plays.  She  was  said  to  complain 
of  the  repertory  herself.  But  it  is  doubtful  whether,  apart 
from  all  booking-office  questions  of  popularity,  she  would  have 
appeared  to  a  greater  advantage  in  plays  of  a  more  exalted 
character.  Duse  was  not  a  tragic  actress  in  the  sense  one 
imagines  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Rachel  were  tragic.  She  could 
not  enlarge  a  masterpiece  of  poetry  by  her  interpretation,  nor 
give  you  a  plastic  poetic  creation  like  a  piece  of  a  Greek  frieze, 
as  Sarah  Bernhardt  could  and  did  in  Phedrc.  She  was  not  tin- 
incarnation  of  the  tragic  muse  ;  the  gorgeous  pall  overwhelmed 
her  ;  when  she  played  Cleopatra,  for  instance  (Shakespeare's 
Cleopatra  much  mutilated),  her  peculiar  power  seemed  to  melt 
into  thin  air.  I  once  heard  a  celebrated  French  actress,  and  a 
French  critic,  who  had  both  only  seen  her  play  Cleopatra,  wonder 
20 


3o6  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

what  her  reputation  was  based  on.  What  she  needed  was  some- 
thing between  high  comedy  and  tragedy  ;  and  this  was  pre- 
cisely what  she  found  in  certain  parts  of  the  modern  repertory 
of  Ibsen,  D'Annunzio,  Sardou,  Dumas  fils,  and  Pinero,  in  which 
she  played  during  that  summer. 

Dumas'  play,  La  Femme  de  Claude,  gave  her  not  only  an 
opportunity  of  showing  her  astonishing  skill,  her  perfect 
technique,  but  it  revealed  unguessed-of,  almost  incredible, 
aspects  of  her  genius.  When  she  played  parts  such  as 
Sudemann's  Magda  and  La  Dame  aux  Camelias,  one  used 
to  feel  as  if  one  ought  not  to  be  there  ;  as  if  one  were 
peeping  through  a  keyhole  at  scenes  of  too  intimate  and 
too  sacred  a  nature  for  the  public  eye.  When  Amando 
hurled  money  and  hissed  vituperation  at  her  in  the  fourth 
act  of  La  Dame  aux  Camelias,  one  felt  as  if  the  police  ought 
to  interfere,  and  save  so  noble  a  creature  from  outrage. 
One  doubted  whether  Duse  were  an  artist  or  even  an  actress 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  and  whether  all  she  gave  were 
not  glimpses  of  the  extraordinary  nobility  of  her  personality  ; 
whether  the  play  were  not  beside  the  question ;  whether  she 
might  not  just  as  well  appear  on  the  stage  in  her  ordinary 
clothes  and  tell  us  a  few  confidences — her  joys  and  her  sorrows. 

But  her  performance  in  La  Femme  de  Claude  proved  the 
contrary.  It  proved  that  in  the  subtle  and  objective  in- 
terpretation of  a  definite,  character,  a  character  utterly  alien 
to  her  own  nature,  she  could  rival,  if  not  surpass,  any  artist  in 
the  world. 

La  Femme  de  Claude  was  said  by  Theodore  de  Banville  to  be 
a  symbolic  play.  Call  it  that  if  you  will,  or  call  it  a  melodrama. 
The  subject  is  simple  and  dramatic,  the  action  rapid  and 
vigorous.  An  austere  scientific  engineer  called  Claude  has 
married  an  evil  wife,  C^sarine.  She  leaves  him.  He  invents 
a  new  and  powerful  gun.  She  comes  back.  A  foreign  spy 
blackmails  her.  He  threatens  to  make  revelations  about  her 
to  her  husband,  unless  she  obtains  for  him  the  secret  of  the 
gun.  At  first  she  defies  this  man.  She  says  her  husband 
knows  all  there  is  to  be  known  ;  he  then  mentions  incidents 
that  her  husband  cannot  know,  for  the  bare  knowledge  of  them 
would  make  him  an  accessory  in  crime.  She  undertakes  to  get 
the  secret.  She  tries  to  win  back  her  husband,  fails,  and 
then  shows  her  teeth.     She  sets  about  to  seduce  her  husband's 


LONDON,  M  AM  HIKI  A,  RUSSIA  307 

pupil,  a  young  man  who  is  already  in  love  with  her.  She 
persuades  him  to  give  her  the  papers  and  her  husband  shoots 
her  dead  when  they  are  about  to  elope.  At  first  sight  you 
would  have  thought  that  Duse's  genius  was  too  refined  and 
too  noble  to  render  the  snake-like,  feline,  insinuating, 
feverish,  treacherous,  panther-like,  savage  nature  of  Dumas' 
she-monster.  Sarah  Bernhardt  is  the  artist  who  at  once  leaps 
into  the  mind  as  being  suited  to  the  part,  a  part  that  might 
have  been  written  for  her.  I  have  seen  Sarah  Bernhardt  play 
it  and  play  it  superbly.  At  certain  moments  she  carried  you 
right  off  your  feet. 

But  Duse  played  on  the  nerves  till  they  vibrated  like  strings, 
in  the  same  manner  as  she  herself  was  tremulously  vibrating. 
It  was  a  gradual  process  of  preparation,  which  began  from  the 
first  moment  she  walked  on  to  the  stage  until  she  fell  forward 
at  the  end  with  outstretched  hands  when  she  was  shot.  Her 
art  was  like  that  of  a  cunning  violinist  ;  the  music  with  its 
delicately  interwoven  theme-  was  phrased  in  subtle  progress  and 
with  divine  economy  of  effect,  till  she  reached  the  catastrophe, 
and  then  Duse  attained  to  that  height  where  all  style  disappears, 
and  only  the  perfection  of  art,  in  which  all  artifice  is  concealed, 
remains.  The  climax  needed  no  effort,  no  strain  ;  it  was  the  way 
every  note  had  been  struck  before,  that  made  it  tremendous. 

Of  course  she  transfigured  Cesarine,  the  heroine  ;  in  the 
modern  repertory  she  always  raised  the  scale  of  everything  she 
touched,  so  that  you  cried  out  for  her  to  play  tragedy,  and  that 
was  ju.-^t  what  >he  could  not  do.  She  did  not  make  Dunu>' 
heroine  a  better  woman  than  he  intended  her  to  be  ;  but  she 
made  her  a  greater  woman  than  he  can  ever  have  hoped  she 
would  appear.  Duse's  Cesarine  was  wicked  to  the  core  ;  not 
thoughtlessly  non-moral,  not  invincibly  ignorant  in  her 
wickedness,  but  oonscioiisly  and  deliberately  destructive;  and 
the  manifestation  and  expression  of  this  unmitigated  evil  was 
rendered  ten  times  more  impressive  by  the  subtlety  of  its 
expression  and  the  delicate  refinement  which  it  was  clothed 
with  and  partially  disguised.  Duse  reminded  one  of  Tacitus' 
description  of  Nero's  wife,  Poppa?a,  who,  he  says,  professed 
virtue  but  practi.-ed  vice  ;  and  whose  demeanour  was  irre- 
proachably modest.  '  Sermo  comis  nee  absurdum  ingenium  : 
modestiam  pneferre  et  lascivia  uti." 

When  she  met  Qande's  VOUng  pupil  in  the  first  act,  she  g   , 


3o8  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

while  she  deliberately  bewitched  him,  the  impression  that  she 
was  herself  the  victim  of  an  ingenuous  and  involuntary  passion. 
In  the  second  act  her  appeal  to  her  husband  would  have  de- 
ceived any  jury  and  most  judges.  The  notes  rang  out  with 
the  authentic  indignation  of  sincerity,  with  the  seemingly  un- 
mistakable agony  of  a  victim  of  unjust  circumstance  and 
outrageous  fortune  ;  in  that  long  and  arduous  scene,  in  that 
tense  duel,  fought  inch  by  inch  between  the  desperate  woman 
and  the  unrelenting  man,  she  was  a  gallant,  a  glorious  fighter 
in  a  losing  battle ;  and  at  the  last,  when  she  saw  the  game 
was  lost,  and  she  allowed  her  true  nature  to  show,  the  spectacle 
was  not  that  of  a  savage  beast  that  can  do  nothing  but  snarl 
and  howl,  but  of  a  gentle  animal  that  suddenly  shows  ferocious 
teeth  and  reveals  a  hellish  hate. 

The  finest  moment  of  the  play  came  after  this,  when  she 
sets  about  her  final  capture  of  the  young  man  and  makes 
him  deliver  her  husband's  secret.  When  she  triumphed  and 
said  the  word  "  Vieni,"  it  was  as  if  one  were  watching  some 
demi-goddess,  some  Circe,  swoop  gracefully  but  with  terrible 
accuracy  of  aim  on  to  her  prey ;  swift  and  calm  in  the  deadly 
certainty  of  her  stroke  and  of  her  triumph.  Nobody  can  ever 
have  acted  better  than  Duse  did  at  that  moment. 

Duse's  performance  as  Cesarine  was  the  finest  complete 
creative  work  I  ever  saw  her  do — finer,  in  my  opinion,  than  her 
Magda,  because  in  Magda  she  was  too  noble  for  the  part,  and 
rendered  none  of  the  cabotine  side  of  the  character. 

The  most  charming  of  Duse's  parts  was  Mirandolina  in 
Goldoni's  comedy,  La  Locandiera,  in  which  she  gaily  twisted 
all  men  round  her  fingers  and  played  on  their  weaknesses  as  a 
harper  on  his  strings.  On  the  same  day  she  gave  this  ex- 
hibition of  gaiety,  charm,  rippling  fun,  and  sly  humour,  the 
whole  as  easy  and  spontaneous  and  as  fresh  as  a  melody  by 
Mozart,  she  played  Lydie  in  Alexandre  Dumas'  terrible  little 
masterpiece  in  one  act,  La  Visile  de  Noces,  and  showed  with 
unflinching  truth  not  realism  but  a  Tolstoy-like  reality  how  a 
woman  with  despair  in  her  soul  can  calmly  and  deliberately 
unravel  the  skein  of  man's  weakness,  cowardice,  and  infamy, 
and  then  spit  out  her  disgust  at  it. 

In  Scribe  and  Legouve's  tinsel  and  lifeless  melodrama, 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  she  was  wasting  her  talent,  and  indeed 
in  her  hands  the  greater  part  of  the  play  fell  flat  as  far  as  there 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  309 

is  anything  in  it  to  fall  flat.     But  in  the  death  scene  she  re- 
vealed in  u  phases  of  her  genius  : 

"  Silver  lights  ami  'larks  undreamed  of." 

She  turned  the  tinsel  of  the  play  into  gold  bv  her  bewilder- 
ment, when  she  felt  the  first  effects  of  the  poison,  her  delirium, 
when  she  imagined  herself  on  the  lighted  stage,  and  by  her  final 
battle  with  Death,  when  she  recovered  her  senses  once  more, 
in  the  last  moments  of  her  agony.  One  gasped  for  breath  when 
she  felt  the  first  throes  of  the  poison  ;  and  when  she  became 
delirious,  the  surroundings  seemed  to  fade  ;  we  were  face  to  face 
with  a  ghost ;  we  felt  the  icy  wind  blowing  from  the  dark  river. 

In  D'Annunzio's  play,  La  Gioconda,  she  might  have  been 
De  Quincey's  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows.  In  Sardou's  Fedora  not  all 
her  technical  skill  could  supply  the  acid  necessary  to  make 
that  particular  and  peculiarly  constructed  engine  work.  The 
engine  was  made  for  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  nobody  else  has  ever 
succeeded  in  making  it  deliver  the  strong  electric  shock,  the 
infectious  thrill  that  it  produced  when  Sarah  Bernhardt  dealt 
with  it.  It  may  not  have  been  worth  doing;  but  only  she  could 
do  it. 

Looking  back  on  all  the  plays  in  which  I  saw  Duse  act,  and 
on  all  the  striking  moments  and  scenes  in  those  plays — her 
confusion  when  she  recognised  the  man  who  had  seduced  her 
in  Magda,  the  pathos  of  her  death  scene  in  La  Dame  aux 
Camillas,  her  withering  scorn  in  Sardou's  Odette,  her  irony 
in  Ibsen's  Doll's  House,  her  fiendish  leer  of  seduction  and 
triumph  in  La  Femme  de  Claude — there  was  one  moment  in  one 
play  which  impressed  me  more  than  everything  else.  This  was 
in  the  last  act  of  Pinero's  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqucray,  when  she 
looks  at  herself  in  a  hand-glass  and  realises  that  when  she  loses 
her  looks  she  will  have  lost  all.  Duse  looked  in  the  glass, and 
she  passed  her  hand  over  her  face.  It  was  only  a  flash,  a  flicker  ; 
it  only  lasted  a  second,  ami  yet  in  that  second  her  face  reminded 
me  of  the  title  of  one  of  Kipling's  Tories,  The  Gate  of  the  Hundred 
Sorrows.  She  looked  suddenly,  and  for  a  second,  fifty  years 
older,  and  one  fell  that  the  act  of  suicide  with  which  the  play 
ends  was  not  improbable,  whatever  else  it  might  be — was,  in 
fact,  inevitable. 

Sarah  Bernhardl ,  Duse,  and  Chaliapinewere  the  three  greatest 
artists  I  have  seen  on  the  stage  ;  for  Chaliapine,  in  addition  to 


310  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

his  glorious   voice  and  his   consummate  singing,  is   a  great 
actor,  and  his  range  is  prodigious.     He  can  sing  one  night  in 
Ivan  the  Terrible  and  freeze  you  to  the  marrow  by  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  grim,  half-insane,  majestic,  and  frenzied  King ; 
and  the  next  night  give  you  a  picture  of  calm  and  serene 
saintliness  in  the  part  of  the  old  Believer  in  Khovantincha ; 
or  in  the  Barbier  de  Seville  he  can  be  comic  with  a  rollicking 
gusto.     Perhaps  his  finest  part  is  that  of  Mephistopheles  in 
Boito's  opera.     When  he  comes  on  to  the  stage  in  the  first  act 
disguised  as  a  monk  you  feel  that  the  devil  is  there,  the  Prince 
of  Darkness,  and  not  a  fancy-dress  ball  Mephistopheles ;  and 
in  the  scene  on  the  Brocken,  he  looks  and  plays  as  if  he 
were    Milton's    Satan.      There   is    a   titanic   grandeur   about 
him.     He  wears  the  pall  of  tragedy  as  easily  as  if  it  were 
a  dressing-gown.     Like  all  great  actors,  he  gives  you  the  im- 
pression that  his  acting  is  quite  simple,  an  easy  thing  which 
anyone  could  do.     If  you  watch  him  closely,  it  is  impossible  to 
detect  how  and  when  he  makes  a  gesture  or  gives  a  look  or  an 
intonation.     It  is  done  before  you  have  time  to  see  it  done. 
He  told  me  once  that  his  great  desire  and  ambition  was  to  play 
in  Shakespeare ;  and  his  Boris  Godonnov,  in  which  he  gave  so 
ineffaceable  a  picture  of  sombre  ambition,  brooding  fear,  and 
eating  remorse,  indicated  that  he  would  have  been  magnificent 
as  Othello,  Richard  III.,  or  Lear.     The  finest  acting  I  ever  saw 
on  the  English  stage  were  Irving's  Becket  with  its  sublimely 
dignified  and  impressive  death-scene  in  the  Cathedral ;    Ellen 
Terry's  Beatrice  with  its  inspiring  pace  and  rippling  diction — 
indeed,  Ellen  Terry  in  any  part,  Portia,  Imogen,  Nance  Old- 
field — Sir  John  Hare  in  A  Pair  of  Spectacles  and  the  Notorious 
Mrs.  Ebbsmith  ;  Mrs.  Kendal  in  The  Likeness  of  the  Night,  and, 
for  imaginative  character  acting,  Tree  as  Svengali.     Hare  had 
the  same  seeming  simplicity  in  his  art,  the  same  concealment 
of  all  artifice,  the  same  undetectable  conjury  that  struck  one 
in  the  work  of  Duse,  Chaliapine,   Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  all 
great  actors. 

Mrs.  Kendal  acted  so  well,  when  she  and  her  husband  and  Sir 
John  Hare  used  to  appear  regularly  at  the  St.  James's  Theatre, 
and  people  took  the  excellence  of  her  acting  so  much  for  granted, 
that  they  tired  of  it.  She  left  us.  She  toured  in  America, 
and  then  she  came  back  and  appeared  in  a  play  called  The 
Greatest  of  These,  at  the  Garrick  Theatre,  in  June  1896;  and 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  311 

Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  in  hisnotii  e  of  the  play,  said:  "  Mrs.  Kendal, 
forgetting  thai  London  pi  have  been  starved  f<>r  years 

in  the  matter  of  acting,  inconf  iderati  ly  gave  them  more  in  the 
first  ten  minutes  than  they  have  had  in  the  lasl  five  years, 
with  the  result  that  the  poor  wretches  became  hysterical  and 
vented  their  applause  in  sobs  and  shrieks.  And  y<  t  in  the  old 
days  at  the  St.  James's  they  would  have  taken  it  as  a  matter  of 
course  and  perhaps  grumbled  at  the  play  into  the  bargain." 

But  of  all  my  playgoing,  I  think  what  I  enjoyed  most  of  all 
was  a  summer  troupe  at  the  Arena  Nazionale  in  Florence,  in  the 
summer  of  1893.  The  troupe  was  an  ordinary  one  ;  but  they 
produced  a  different  play  every  night  ;  and  I  there  saw  nearly 
all  the  plays  worth  seeing  in  the  European  repertory,  including 
Shakespeare,  Ibsen,  Dumas,  Sardou,  Maupassant,  Sudermann — 
besides  many  Italian  plays.  The  seats  were  cheap  ;  smoking 
was  allowed.  The  auditorium  was  open  to  the  sky.  The 
Italians  acted  so  naturally,  and  so  easily,  that  they  were  more 
like  children  improvising  charades  than  professionals  working 
for  their  bread  ;  and  among  them  was  an  actor  who  made  a 
great  name  for  himself  later — Zacchoni.  I  remember  that 
when  I  came  back  to  London  and  went  to  a  play  for  the  first 
time,  the  diction  of  the  English  players  seemed  so  stilted, 
laborious,  and  artificial,  after  these  easy,  babbling  Italians, 
that  I  felt  as  if  it  was  in  London  and  not  in  Florence  that  I  had 
been  listening  to  a  foreign  language. 

At  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1905  I  went  back  to  Manchuria. 
I  spent  a  few  days  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  then  I  embarked 
once  more  in  the  Transbaikalian  railway.  The  journey  was 
pleasantly  different  from  what  it  had  been  in  IQ04,  and  almost 
as  interesting  in  another  way.  An  officer  of  the  German 
for. -try.  and  a  friend  of  a  Hildesheim  friend  of  mine — Erich 
YVippern — was  in  the  train.  He  was  reading  the  second  part  of 
Goethe's  Funs/.  I  shared  a  compartment  with  an  army  doctor. 
We  crossed  Lake  Baikal  in  a  steamer.  It  was  blue,  and  there 
was  nothing  of  the  ghostly  unreal  look  about  it  that  it  wears  in 
the  winter.  Kharbin  was  changed  beyond  recognition.  The 
town  was  twice  as  big  and  seemed  to  be  almost  deserted. 
General  Linevitch,  the  new  Commander  -  in -Chief,  did  not 
allow  officers  to  go  there  any  more  except  on  pressing  errands 
and  for  good  reasons.  I  spent  a  few  days  there,  and  I  got  to 
know  some  of  the  local  officers,  among  other-  a  1  harming  General 


3i2  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Zacharoff  who  was  in  charge  of  the  demobilisation.  I  found 
myself  suddenly  plunged  into  a  new  society  which  was  not 
unlike  what  Chekhov  depicts  in  his  plays.  A  small  drama 
was  progressing  round  the  wife  of  a  local  engineer,  who  was 
the  Circe  of  the  place.  She  was  not  particularly  beautiful,  but 
she  did  what  she  liked  with  whomsoever  she  pleased.  There 
were  quarrels,  duels  arranged,  suicides  threatened,  revolvers 
fired  ;  the  whole  ending  in  conversation  and  cigarette  smoke — 
just  as  in  a  Chekhov  play,  of  which  the  motto  might  have 
been:  "  L'amour  passe  ;  lafumeereste." 

On  ist  September  peace  was  declared,  and  the  soldiers 
in  the  place  tore  the  telegram  from  one  another's  hands. 

I  went  to  Gunchuling,  which  was  the  remoter  G.H.Q.  of  the 
army,  and  I  stayed  with  the  Press  censors.  Although  peace  had 
been  declared,  an  officer  whom  I  knew  got  orders  to  go  and 
fortify  positions,  and  Kuropatkin's  army  was  said  to  have 
received  orders  to  advance.  At  the  time  this  seemed  inex- 
plicable. The  reason  of  this  was,  I  learnt  a  long  time  after- 
wards, that  news  had  been  received  of  a  revolution  in  Japan. 

From  Gunchuling  I  went  to  Godziadan,  which  was  the 
advanced  G.H.Q.  where  the  Commander-in-Chief  lived  in  a 
train.  I  had  telegraphed  from  Gunchuling  to  the  2nd  Trans- 
baikal  battery,  asking  them  to  send  horses  to  fetch  me.  The 
battery  was  in  Mongolia,  at  a  place  called  Jen-tsen-Tung,  on  the 
extreme  right  flank  of  the  army  and  eighty  miles  from  Godziadan. 
Two  Cossacks  arrived  with  a  pony  for  me  and  my  own  saddle 
on  it,  and  we  started  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  on  our 
long  and  exhausting  ride. 

We  spent  the  first  night  at  the  Chinese  town  of  Ushitai, 
and  halted  for  our  midday  meal  the  next  day  at  a  Chinese  village, 
a  small  tumble-down  place  near  a  large  clump  of  trees.  A 
Chinaman  came  out  of  the  house  and,  seeing  the  red  brassard  of 
the  correspondents  on  my  arm,  thought  I  was  a  doctor.  In 
pidgin  Russian  he  told  me  his  child  was  ill ;  and  leading  me  into 
his  house  he  showed  me  a  brown  and  naked  infant  with  a  fat 
stomach.  The  infant  had  a  white  tongue  and  had  been  feeding, 
so  the  Chinaman  told  me,  on  raw  Indian  corn.  I  prescribed 
cessation  of  diet,  and  the  Chinaman  seemed  to  be  satisfied,  and 
asked  me  whether  I  would  like  to  hear  a  concert.  I  said  :  "  Very 
much  "  ;  he  then  bade  me  sit  down  on  the  K'ang  and  said: 
"  Smotri,  smolri  "  ("  Look,  look  ").    Presently  another  Chinaman 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  313 

came  into  the  room,  and  taking  from  the  wall  a  large  and  twisted 
clarion  made  of  brass,  he  blew  od  it  one  deafening  blast  and  hung 
it  up  on  the  wall  again.  There  was  a  short  pause.  I  waited  in 
expectation,  and  the  Chinaman  turned  to  me  and  said  :  "The 
concert  is  now  over."  I  then  went  to  have  luncheon  with  the 
Cossacks  under  the  trees,  the  meal  consisting  of  rusks  as  hard 
as  bricks  swimming  in  an  earthen  bowl  of  boiling  water,  on  the 
surface  of  which  tea  was  sprinkled.  Winn  we  had  finished  our 
meal,  and  just  as  we  were  about  to  start,  the  Chinaman  in  whose 
house  I  had  been  entertained,  rushed  up  to  me  and  said  :  "  In 
your  country,  when  you  go  to  a  concert,  do  you  not  pay  for  it  ?  ' 
The  concert  was  paid  for,  and  we  rode  on.  We  rode  through 
grassy  and  flowery  steppes  :  this  was  the  beginning  of  Mongolia. 
We  met  Mongols  sitting  sideways  on  their  ponies  and  dressed  in 
coats  of  many  colours,  and  we  arrived  at  Jen-tsen-Tung  at  eight 
o'clock.  There  I  found  my  old  friend  Kislitski  of  the  battery, 
who  was  living  in  an  immaculately  clean  Chinese  house,  and 
there  I  dined  and  spent  the  night.  The  next  morning  I  rode  to 
a  village  two  miles  off,  where  the  battery  was  quartered.  There 
I  stayed  from  the  15th  of  September  until  the  1st  of  October, 
living  a  life  of  ease  and  interest.  The  village  where  we  were 
quartered  was  picturesque.  It  lay  in  a  clump  of  willow  trees, 
and  near  it  there  was  a  large  wood  which  stretched  down  to  a 
broad  brown  river.  Next  door  to  us  lived  a  Chinaman  who  was 
preparing  three  young  students  for  their  examination  in  Pekin. 
He  was  an  amiable  and  urbane  scholar,  and  he  used  to  put  on 
large  horn  spectacles  and  chant  the  most  celebrated  stop-shorts 
in  Chinese  literature.  Stop-shorts  are  Chinese  poems  in  four 
lines.  They  are  called  >ti>p-shorts  because  the  sense  goes  on 
when  the  sound  -ti>j'-. 

We  spent  the  time  in  riding,  reading,  bathing,  sleeping,  and 
playing  patience. 

Jen-tsen-Tung  was  a  large  and  picturesque  town  ;  a  stream 
of  Mongols  flowed  in  and  out  of  it,  wearing  the  most  picturesque 
clothes — silks  and  velvets  of  deep  orange  and  sea-green  that 
glowed  like  jewels.  At  one  of  the  street  corners  a  professional 
wizard,  dressed  in  black  silk,  embroidered  with  silver  moons 
and  wearing  a  black  conical  hat,  practised  his  trade.  You 
asked  a  question,  paid  a  small  sum,  and  he  told  you  the  answei 
to  the  question  ;  but  he  refused  t"  prophesy  f"i  more  than  a 
hundred  days  ahead. 


3M  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

The  evenings  in  our  quarters  were  beautiful.  The  sky 
would  have  a  faint  pinky-mauve  tinge,  like  a  hydrangea,  and  a 
large  misty  moon  hung  over  the  delicate  willow  trees  that  were 
silvery  and  rustled  faintly  in  the  half  light.  From  the  yard 
would  float  the  sounds  of  music,  music  played  on  a  one-stringed 
instrument  and  accompanying  a  wailing  song,  an  infinitely 
melancholy  music,  less  Oriental  than  Chinese  music,  and  more 
Eastern  than  Russian  music. 

I  left  this  dreamy  paradise  on  the  1st  of  October,  and  I 
arrived  at  Kharbin  on  the  7th  of  October. 

At  Jen-tsen-Tung  I  had  consulted  the  magician  who  practised 
his  arts  in  the  street  about  my  journey  home.  His  answer  was 
that  I  could  go  home  by  the  west  or  by  the  east  ;  west  would  be 
better,  but  I  should  meet  with  obstacles.  His  prophecy  came 
true,  but  the  obstacles  did  not  begin  till  we  arrived  at  Samara. 
I  was  in  the  Trans-Siberian  express.  There  were  on  board  the 
train  some  officers,  a  German  savant,  two  German  men  of 
commerce,  three  Americans — who  were  on  their  way  back  from 
Siberia,  where  they  had  managed  a  mine — a  Polish  student,  and 
some  ladies.  I  shared  a  compartment  with  Alexander  Dimi- 
triev-Mamonov,  whose  acquaintance  I  had  made  at  Kharbin. 
He  was  the  landlord  of  a  small  property  near  Kirsanov.  During 
the  war  he  had  been  employed  in  the  Russo-Chinese  Bank  at 
Port  Arthur,  where  he  had  worked  during  the  daytime.  At 
night  he  had  served  in  the  trenches.  He  spoke  English  per- 
fectly, although  he  had  never  been  to  England.  The  first  part 
of  the  journey  was  uneventful,  and  nothing  of  interest  happened 
till  we  arrived  at  Irkutsk,  except  that  the  German  man  of  com- 
merce had  a  violent  quarrel  with  one  of  the  officers  because  he 
did  not  take  off  his  hat  in  the  restaurant  car,  in  which  there  was 
a  portrait  of  the  Emperor.  Had  the  German  been  a  little  better 
versed  in  Russian  law,  he  would  have  known  that  a  recent 
decree  had  made  this  salutation  unnecessary  ;  as  it  was,  he 
gave  in  and  submitted  to  the  incident  being  written  down  in 
a  protocol. 

While  we  were  quietly  travelling,  the  Russian  revolution 
had  begun.  The  first  news  of  it  came  to  me  in  the  following 
manner.  We  had  crossed  the  Urals,  and  we  had  been  travelling 
thirteen  days  ;  we  had  arrived  at  Samara,  when  the  attendant, 
who  looked  after  the  first-class  carriages,  came  into  my  com- 
partment and  heaved  a  sigh.     I  asked  him  what  was  the  matter. 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  315 

"  We  shan't  get  farther  than  Tenia,"  he  said.  "  Why?  '  I 
asked.  "Because  01  the  unpleasant^  ■  "  (nirj<nuinosti). 
I  asked,  "  What  unplea  antnesses?  '  Cnere  is  a  mutiny," 
he  said,  "on  the  line."  We  passed  the  big  station  <>f  Sisran 
and  arrived  at  the  small  town  of  Kousnetsk,  which  was  no  bigger 
than  a  village.  There  we  were  told  the  train  could  not  go  any 
farther  because  of  the  strike. 

We  expected  an  ordinary  railway  strike,  which  would  mean  at 
the  most  a  delay  of  a  few  hours.     We  got  out  and  walked  about 
the  platform.    By  the  evening  the  passengers  began  to  hi  tow  signs 
of  restlessness.     Most  of  them  sent  long  telegrams  to  various 
authorities.     They  drew  up  a  petition  in  the  form  of  a  round- 
robin,  which  was  telegraphed  to  the  Minister  of  Ways  and  Com- 
munications, saying  that  an  express  train  full  of  passengers, 
extremely   over-tired   by  a   long  and   fatiguing   journey,  was 
waiting  at  Kousnetsk,  ami  asking  the  Minister  to  be  so  good  as  to 
arrange  for  them  to  proceed  farther.     This  telegram  remained 
unanswered.     The  next  day  resignation  seemed  to  come  over  the 
company,  all  hough  innumerable  complaints  were  voiced,  such 
"  Only  in  Russia  could  such  a  disgraceful  thing  happen," 
and   one   of   the   passengers   suggested    that    Prince    Kilkov's 
portrait,  which  was  hanging  in  the  dining-car,  should  be  turned 
face  to  the  wall.     Prince  Kilkov  had  built  the  railway,  and 
was  at  that  moment  driving  an  engine  himself  from  Moscow 
to  St.  Petersburg,  as  no  trains  were  running.     He  was  over 
seventy  years  old.     The  Polish  student,  who  had  made  music 
for  the  Americans,  playing  by  ear  the  accompaniment  to  any 
tune  they  whistled  him,  and  many  tunes  from  the  repertory 
of  current   musical  comedy,  played  the  pianoforte  with   ex- 
aggerated facility  and  endless  fioriturc  and  runs.     I  asked  an 
American  mechanic  whowas  travelling  with  the  mining  managers, 
whether  he  liked  the  music.     He  said  he  would  like  it  if  the 
"damned  hell  were  knocked  out  of  it,"  which  was  exactly  my 
feeling.     On   the   second  day  after  our  arrival,  my  American 
friend-  left  for  Samara  with  the  intention  of  proceeding  thence 
by  water  to  St.  Petersburg.     I  have  wondered  ever  since  how 
long  the  journeytook  them,  and  whether  they  found  a  steamer. 

As  it  was,  their  departure  was  not  without  a  comic  element. 
This  is  what  happened.  They  were  talking  frankly  about 
the  supine  inertia  oi  the  Russians  when  faced  with  an  emergency, 
and    were    pointing    out    how   different    were    the    ever-ready 


3i6  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

presence  of  mind  and  the  instant  translation  of  ideas  into 
action  that  marked  men  of  their  own  country.  They  added 
that  they  had  lost  no  time  in  chartering  the  best  horses  in  the 
town,  and  were  starting  for  Samara  in  an  hour's  time.  They 
were  not  going  to  take  things  lying  down.  While  they  were 
telling  us  this  in  the  restaurant  car,  a  minor,  very  minor 
and  rather  shabby,  Russian  official  was  sitting  in  the  corner 
of  the  car  saying  nothing  and  drinking  tea.  It  turned  out 
he  had  overheard  and  understood  the  conversation  of  the 
Americans,  for,  when  they  carried  their  luggage  to  where 
they  expected  their  frisky  Troika  to  be,  it  was  there  indeed, 
but  they  had  the  mortification  of  seeing  the  little  official  already 
inside  it,  galloping  off  and  waving  them  a  friendly  farewell.  They 
had  to  be  content  with  an  inferior  equipage  and  a  later  start. 

The  passengers  spent  the  time  in  exploring  the  town, 
which  was  somnolent  and  melancholy.  Half  of  it  was  built 
on  a  hill,  a  typical  Russian  village — a  mass  of  squat  brown 
huts  ;  the  other  half  in  the  plain  was  like  a  village  in  any  other 
country.  The  idle  guards  and  railway  officials  sat  on  the  steps 
of  the  station  room  whistling.  Two  more  trains  arrived — 
a  Red  Cross  train  and  a  slow  passenger  train.  Passengers 
from  these  trains  wandered  about  the  platform,  mixing  with 
the  idlers  from  the  town.  A  crowd  of  peasants,  travellers, 
engineers  and  Red  Cross  attendants,  sauntered  up  and  down 
in  loose  shirts  and  big  boots,  munching  sunflower  seeds  and 
spitting  out  the  husks  till  the  platform  was  thick  with 
refuse.  A  doctor  who  was  in  our  train,  half  a  German,  with 
an  official  training  and  an  orthodox  mind,  talked  to  the 
railway  servants  like  a  father.  It  was  wrong  to  strike,  he 
said.  They  should  have  put  down  their  grievances  on  paper 
and  had  them  forwarded  through  the  proper  channels.  The 
officials  said  that  would  have  been  waste  of  ink  and  penmanship. 
"  I  wonder  they  don't  kill  him,"  Mamonov  said  to  me,  and  I 
agreed.  Each  passenger  was  given  a  rouble  a  day  to  buy  food. 
The  third-class  passengers  were  given  checks,  in  return  for  which 
they  could  receive  meals.  However,  they  deprecated  the  plan 
and  said  they  wanted  the  amount  in  beer.  They  received  it. 
They  then  looted  the  refreshment  room,  broke  the  windows,  and 
took  away  the  food.  This  put  an  end  to  the  check  system. 
The  feeling  among  the  first-class  passengers  rose.  Something 
ought  to  be  done,  was  the  general  verdict  ;    but  nobody  quite 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  317 

knew  what.  They  felt  that  the  train  ought  to  be  placed  111  a 
safe  position.  The  situation  on  the  evening  of  the  second  day 
began  to  be  like  that  described  in  Maupassant's  story,  Boule  dc 
Suif.  Nothing  could  be  done  except  to  explore  the  town  of 
Kousnetsk.  There  was  a  feeling  in  the  air  that  the  normal 
conditions  of  life  had  been  reversed.  The  railway  officials  and 
the  workmen  smiled  ironically,  as  much  as  to  say,  "It  is  our 
turn  now,"  but  the  waiter  in  the  restaurant  car  went  on  serving 
the  aristocracy,  which  was  represented  by  a  lady  in  a  tweed  coat 
and  skirt,  and  two  old  gentlemen,  first.  The  social  order  might 
be  overturned,  but,  though  empires  might  crash  and  revolu- 
tions convulse  the  world,  he  was  not  going  to  forget  his  place. 

It  was  warm  antninn  weather.  The  roads  were  soft  and 
muddy,  and  there  was  a  smell  of  rotting  leaves  in  the  air.  It 
was  damp  and  grey,  with  gleams  of  weak,  pitiful  sunshine.  In 
the  middle  of  the  town  there  was  a  large  market  -place,  where  a 
brisk  trade  in  geese  was  carried  on.  One  man  whom  I  watched 
failed  to  sell  his  geese  during  the  day,  and  while  driving  them 
home  at  sunset  talked  to  them  as  if  they  were  dogs,  saying: 
"  Cheer  up,  we  shall  soon  be  home."  A  party  of  convicts  who 
belonged  to  the  passenger  train  were  working  not  far  from  tin 
station,  and  asked  the  passers-by  for  cigarettes,  which  weri 
freely  given  to  the  "  unfortunates,"  as  convicts  were  called  in 
Russia.  I  met  them  near  the  station,  and  they  at  once  said : 
"  Give  the  unfortunates  something."  Towards  evening,  in 
one  of  the  third-class  carriages,  a  party  of  Little  Russians,  Red 
Cross  orderlies,  sang  together  in  parts,  and  sometimes  in  rough 
counterpoint,  melancholy,  beautiful  songs  with  a  strange 
trotting  rlivt  hm  with  no  end  and  no  beginning,  or  rather  ending 
on  the  dominant  as  if  to  begin  again,  and  opposite  their  carriage 
on  the  platform  a  small  crowd  of  muzhiks  gathered  together 
and  listened  and  praised  the  singing. 

On  the  morning  of  the  fourth  day  after  we  had  arrived,  the 
impatience  of  the  passengers  increased  to  fever  pitch.  A  Colonel, 
who  was  with  us  and  who  knew  how  to  use  the  telegraph, 
commnnicated  with  Pensa,  the  next  big  station.  Although 
the  telegraph  clerks  were  on  strike,  they  remained  in  the  oflB 
talking  to  their  friends  on  the  wire  all  over  Russia.  The  >trikri-> 
were  civil.  They  said  they  had  no  objection  to  the  express 
going  farther  ;  that  they  would  neither  boycott  nor  beat  anyone 
who  took  us,  and  that  if  we  could  find  a  friend  to  ilrivc  the 


3iS  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

engine,  well  and  good.  We  found  a  friend,  an  amateur  engine- 
driver,  who  was  willing  to  take  us,  and  on  the  28th  of  October 
we  started  for  Pensa.  We  had  not  gone  far  before  the  engine 
broke  down.  Directly  this  happened  all  the  passengers  offered 
advice  about  the  mending  of  it.  One  man  produced  a  piece  of 
string  for  the  purpose.  But  another  engine  was  found,  and  we 
arrived  at  last  at  Pensa.  There,  I  saw  in  the  telegrams  the 
words  "  rights  of  speech  and  assembly,"  and  I  knew  that  the 
strike  was  a  revolution.  At  Pensa  the  anger  of  the  soldiers 
whose  return  home  from  the  Far  East  had  been  delayed  was 
indescribable.  They  were  lurching  about  the  station  in  a  state 
of  drunken  frenzy,  using  unprintable  language  about  strikes 
and  strikers. 

We  spent  the  night  at  Pensa.  The  next  morning  we  started 
for  Moscow,  but  the  train  came  to  a  dead  stop  at  two  o'clock 
the  next  morning  at  Riazhk,  and  when  I  woke  up,  the  attendant 
came  and  said  we  should  go  no  farther  until  the  unpleasantnesses 
were  over.  But  an  hour  later  news  came  that  we  could  go  to 
Riazan  in  another  train.  Riazan  Station  was  guarded  by 
soldiers.  A  train  was  ready  to  start  for  Moscow,  but  one  had 
to  join  in  a  fierce  scrimmage  to  get  a  place  in  it.  I  found  a 
place  in  a  third-class  carriage.  Opposite  me  was  an  old  man 
with  a  grey  beard.  He  attracted  my  attention  by  his  courtesy. 
He  gently  prevented  a  woman  with  many  bundles  being 
turned  out  of  the  train  by  another  muzhik.  I  asked  him  where 
he  had  come  from.  "  Eighty  versts  the  other  side  of  Irkutsk," 
he  said.  "  I  was  sent  there,  and  now  after  thirteen  years  I  am 
returning  home  at  the  Government's  expense.  I  was  a  convict." 
"  What  were  you  sent  there  for  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Murder  !  "  he 
answered  softly.  The  other  passengers  asked  him  to  tell 
his  story.  "  It's  a  long  story,"  he  said.  "  Tell  it  !  "  shouted 
the  other  passengers.  His  story  was  this.  He  had  got  drunk, 
set  fire  to  a  barn,  and  when  the  owner  had  interfered  he  killed 
him.  He  had  served  a  sentence  of  two  years'  hard  labour  and 
eleven  years  of  exile.  He  was  a  gentle,  humble  creature,  with 
a  mild  expression,  and  he  looked  like  an  apostle.  He  had  no 
money,  and  lived  on  what  the  passengers  gave  him.  I  gave 
him  a  cigarette.  He  smoked  a  quarter  of  it,  and  said  he  would 
keep  the  rest  for  the  journey,  as  he  had  still  three  hundred  miles 
to  travel.  We  arrived  at  Moscow  at  11  o'clock  in  the  evening 
and   found  the  town  in  darkness,  save  for  a  glimmer  of  oil 


LONDON,   MANCIll  RIA,   RUSSIA  319 

lamps.  The  next  morning  we  woke  up  to  find  th.it  Russia 
had  been  given  a  charter  which  contains  1  not  a  Constitution, 
as  many  so  raslfly  took  for  granted,  but  the  promise  of  Con- 
stitutional Government. 

I  stayed  at  the  Hotel  Dresden,  which  when  I  arrived  was 
still  without  lamps  or  light  of  any  kind,  and  the  lift  was  not 
working. 

The  first  thing  which  brought  home  to  me  that  Russia  had 
been  granted  the  promise  of  a  Constitution  was  this.  I  went 
to  the  big  Russian  baths.  Somebody  came  in  and  asked  for 
some  soap,  upon  which  the  barber's  assistant,  aged  about  ten, 
said,  with  the  air  of  a  Hampden:  "Give  the  citizen  some  soap  " 
("Daitc  grazhdaninu  mwilo  ").  Coming  out  of  the  baths  I  found 
the  streets  decorated  with  flags  and  everybody  in  a  state  of 
frantic  and  effervescing  enthusiasm.  I  went  to  one  of  the  big 
restaurants.  There  old  mm  were  embracing  each  other  and 
drinking  the  first  glass  of  vodka  to  free  Russia.  After  luncheon 
I  went  out  into  the  theatre  square.  There  is  a  fountain  in  it, 
wliich  forms  an  excellent  public  platform.  An  orator  mounted 
it  and  addressed  the  crowd.  He  began  to  read  the  Emperor's 
Manifesto.  Then  he  said  :  '  We  are  all  too  much  used  to  the 
rascality  of  the  Autocracy  to  believe  tliis  ;  down  with  the 
Autocracy  !  "  The  crowd,  infuriated — they  were  evidently 
expecting  an  enthusiastic  eulogy — cried:  "Down  with  you  !  " 
But  instead  of  attacking  the  speaker  who  had  aroused  their 
indignation  they  ran  away  from  him  !  It  was  a  curious  sight. 
The  spectators  on  the  pavement  were  seized  with  panic  and 
ran  too.  The  orator,  seeing  his  speech  had  missed  fire,  changed 
his  tone  and  said  :  "  You  have  misunderstood  me."  But  what 
he  had  said  was  perfectly  clear.  This  speaker  was  an  ordinary 
Hyde  Park  orator.  University  professors  spoke  from  the  same 
platform.  Later  in  the  afternoon  a  procession  of  students 
arrived  opposite  my  hotel  with  red  Hags  and  collected 
outside  the  Governor-General's  house.  The  Governor-General 
appeared  on  the  balcony  and  made  a  speech,  in  which  he  said 
that  now  there  were  no  police  he  hoped  that  they  would  be  able 
to  keep  order  themselves.  He  asked  them  also  to  exchange  tin- 
red  flag,  which  was  hanging  on  the  lamp-post  opposite  t la- 
Palace,  for  the  national  flag.  One  little  student  climbed  like 
a  monkey  up  the  lamp-post  and  hung  a  national  flag  there, 
but  did  not   remove  the   red    flag.     Then  the  Governor  a>.ked 


320  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

them  to  sing  the  National  Anthenv,  which  they  did  ;  and  as 
they  went  away  they  sang  the  "  Marseillaise  "  : 

"  On  peut  tres  bien  jouer  ces  deux  airs  a  la  fois 
Et  cela  fait  un  air  qui  fait  sauver  les  rois  I " 

At  one  moment  a  Cossack  arrived,  but  an  official  came  out 
of  the  house  and  told  him  he  was  not  needed,  upon  which  he 
went  away,  amidst  the  jeers,  cheers,  hoots,  and  whistling  of 
the  crowd.  On  the  whole,  the  day  passed  off  quietly. 
There  were  some  tragic  incidents:  the  death  of  a  woman, 
the  wounding  of  a  student  and  a  workman  who  tried  to  rescue 
the  student  from  the  prisoners'  van,  and  the  shooting  of  a 
veterinary  surgeon  called  Bauman. 

While  I  was  standing  on  the  steps  of  the  hotel  in  the  after- 
noon a  woman  rushed  up  frantically  and  said  the  Black  Gang 
were  coming.  A  student  who  came  from  a  good  family  and 
who  was  standing  by  explained  that  the  Black  Gang  were  roughs 
who  supported  the  autocracy.  His  hand,  which  was  bandaged, 
had  been  severely  hurt  by  a  Cossack,  who  had  struck  it  with  his 
whip,  thinking  he  was  about  to  make  a  disturbance.  He  came 
up  to  my  room,  and  from  the  hotel  window  we  had  a  good  view 
of  the  crowd,  which  proceeded  to 

"  Attaquer  la  Marseillaise  en  la 
Sur  les  cuivres,  pendant  que  la  flute  soupire, 
En  mi  bemol  :    '  Veillons  au  salut  de  l'Empire  I'" 

That  night  I  dined  at  the  Metropole  Restaurant,  and  a 
strange  scene  occurred.  At  the  end  of  dinner  the  band  played 
the  "  Marseillaise,"  and  after  it  the  National  Anthem.  Every- 
body stood  up  except  one  mild-looking  man  with  spectacles, 
who  went  on  calmly  eating  his  dinner;  upon  which  a  man 
who  was  sitting  at  the  other  end  of  the  room,  rather  drunk, 
rushed  up  to  him  and  began  to  pull  him  about  and  drag 
him  to  his  feet.  He  made  a  display  of  passive  resistance,  which 
proved  effectual,  and  when  he  had  finished  his  dinner  he  went 
away. 

The  outward  aspect  of  the  town  during  these  days  was 
strange.  Moscow  was  like  a  besieged  city.  Many  of  the  shops 
had  great  wooden  shutters.  Some  of  the  doors  were  marked 
with  a  large  red  cross.  The  distress,  I  was  told,  during  the 
strike  had  been  terrible.  There  was  no  light,  no  gas,  no  water ; 
all  the  shops  were  shut  ;    provisions  and  wood  were  scarce. 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  321 

On  the  afternoon  of  2nd  November  I  went  to  see  Bauman's 
funeral  procession,  which  I  witnessed  from  many  parts  of  the 
town.  It  was  an  impressive  sight.  A  hundred  thousand  men 
took  part  in  it.  The  whole  of  the  Intelligentsia  was  in  the 
streets  or  at  the  windows.  The  windows  and  balconies  were 
crowded  with  people.  Order  was  perfect.  There  was  not  a 
hitch  nor  a  scuffle.  The  men  walking  in  the  procession  were 
students,  doctors,  workmen — people  in  various  kinds  of  uniform. 
There  were  ambulances,  with  doctors  dressed  in  white  in  them, 
in  case  there  should  be  casualties.  The  men  carried  great  red 
banners,  and  the  coffin  was  covered  with  a  scarlet  pall.  As 
they  marched  they  sang  in  a  low  chant  the  '"  Marseillaise," 
"  Viechni  Pamiat,"  and  the  "  Funeral  March  "  ■  of  the  fighters 
for  freedom.  This  last  tune  is  most  impressive.  From  a 
musician's  point  of  view  it  is,  I  am  told,  a  bad  tune  ;  but  then, 
as  Du  Maurier  said,  one  should  never  listen  to  musicians  on  the 
subject  of  music  any  more  than  one  should  listen  to  wine  mer- 
chants on  the  subject  of  wine.  But  it  is  the  tune  which  to  my 
mind  exactly  expressed  the  Russian  Revolution,  with  its  dogged 
melancholy  and  invincible  passion.  It  was  as  befitting  as  the 
"  Marseillaise  "  (which,  by  the  way,  the  Russians  sang  in  parts 
and  slowly)  was  inappropriate.  The  "  Funeral  March  "  had 
nothing  defiant  in  it  ;  but  it  is  one  of  those  tunes  which,  when 
sung  by  a  multitude,  makes  the  flesh  creep  ;  it  is  common- 
place, if  you  will  ;  and  it  expresses — as  if  by  accident — the 
commonplaceness  of  all  that  is  determined  and  unflinching, 
mingled  with  an  accent  of  weary  pathos.  As  it  grew  dark, 
torches  were  brought  out,  lighting  up  the  red  banners  and  the 
scarlet  coffin  of  the  unknown  veterinary  surgeon,  who  in  a 
second,  by  a  strange  freak  of  chance,  had  become  a  hero,  or 
rather  a  symbol ;  an  emblem  and  a  banner,  and  who  was  being 
carried  to  his  last  resting-place  with  a  simplicity  which  eclipsed 
the  pomp  of  royal  funerals,  and  to  the  sound  of  a  low  song 
of  tired  but  indefatigable  sadness,  stronger  and  more  formidable 
than  the  paeans  which  celebrate  the  triumphs  of  kings. 

The  impression  left  on  my  mind  by  this  funeral  was  deep. 

1  By  a  strange  irony  of  fate,  this  tune,  which  the  revolutionaries 
have  made  their  own,  was  originally  U  official  tune,  composed  probably 
by  some  obscure  military  bandmaster,  and  played  at  the  funerals  of 
officers  and  high  officials.  It  became  afterwards  the  national  anthem 
of  the  Bolsheviks. 
21 


322  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

As  I  saw  these  hundred  thousand  men  march  past  so  quietly, 
so  simply,  in  their  bourgeois  clothes,  singing  in  careless,  almost 
conversational,  fashion,  I  seemed  nevertheless  to  hear  the 
"  tramping  of  innumerable  armies,"  and  to  feel  the  breath 

of  the— 

"  Courage  never  to  submit  or  yield, 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome." 

After  Bauman's  funeral,  which  had  passed  off  without  an  in- 
cident, at  eleven  o'clock  a  number  of  students  and  doctors  were 
shot  in  front  of  the  University,  as  they  were  on  their  way  home, 
by  Cossacks,  who  were  stationed  in  the  Riding  School,  opposite 
the  University.  The  Cossacks  fired  without  orders.  They 
were  incensed,  as  many  of  the  troops  were,  by  the  display  of 
red  flags,  and  the  processions. 

The  day  after  Bauman's  funeral  (3rd  November)  was  the 
anniversary  of  the  Emperor's  accession,  and  all  the  "  hooligans  " 
of  the  city,  who  were  now  called  the  "  Black  Gang,"  used  the 
opportunity  to  make  counter  demonstrations  under  the  aegis 
of  the  national  flag.  The  students  did  nothing ;  they  were  in 
no  way  aggressive  ;  but  the  hooligans  when  they  came  across 
students  beat  them  and  in  some  cases  killed  them.  The 
police  did  nothing  ;  they  seemed  to  have  disappeared.  These 
hooligans  paraded  the  town  in  small  groups,  sometimes  uniting, 
blocking  the  traffic,  demanding  money  from  well-dressed  people, 
wounding  students,  and  making  themselves  generally  objection- 
able. When  the  police  were  appealed  to  they  shrugged  their 
shoulders  and  said  :  "  Liberty."  The  hooligans  demanded 
the  release  of  the  man  who  had  killed  Bauman.  "  They  have 
set  free  so  many  of  their  men,"  they  said,  referring  to  the  re- 
volutionaries, "  we  want  our  man  set  free."  The  town  was  in 
a  state  of  anarchy  ;  anybody  could  kill  anyone  else  with  im- 
punity. In  one  of  the  biggest  streets  a  hooligan  came  up  to 
a  man  and  asked  him  for  money ;  he  gave  him  ten  kopecks. 
"  Is  that  all  ?  "  said  the  hooligan.  "  Take  that,"  and  he  killed 
him  with  a  Finnish  knife.  I  was  myself  stopped  by  a  band  on 
the  Twerskaia  and  asked  politely  to  contribute  to  their  fund — 
the  fund  of  the  "  Black  Gang  " — which  I  did  with  considerable 
alacrity.  Students,  or  those  whom  they  considered  to  be 
students  in  disguise,  were  the  people  they  mostly  attacked. 
The  citizens  of  the  town  in  general  soon  began  to  think  that 
this  state  of  things  was  intolerable,  and  vigorous  representations 


LONDON,  M.\N<  HURIA,  RUSSIA  323 

were  made  to  the  town  Duma  th.it  some  step  liquid  be  taken 
to  put  an  end  to  it.    The  hooligans  broke  the  windows  of  the 

Hotel  MeHropole  and  those  of  several  shops.  Liberty  meant  to 
them  doing  as  much  damage  as  they  pleased.  This  state  of 
things  lasted  three  days,  and  then  it  was  stopped — utterly  and 
completely  stopped.     A  notice  was   published  forbidding  all 

demonstrations  in  the  streets  with  flags.  The  police  reappeared, 
and  everything  resumed  its  normal  course.  These  bands  of 
hooligans  were  small  and  easy  to  deal  with.  The  disorders 
were  unnecessary.  But  they  did  some  good  in  one  way : 
they  brought  home  to  everybody  the  necessity  for  order  and 
the  maintenance  of  order,  and  the  plain  fact  that  removal  of 
the  police  meant  anarchy. 

In  spite  of  all  this  storm  and  stress  the  theatres  were  doing 
business  as  usual,  and  at  the  Art  Theatre  I  saw  a  fine  and 
moving  performance  of  Tchekov's  Chaika  and  also  of  Ibs> 
Ghosts.  On  7th  November  I  went  to  see  a  new  play  by  Gorky, 
which  was  produced  at  the  Art  Theatre.  It  was  called  The 
Children  of  the  Sun.  It  was  the  second  night  that  it  had  been 
performed.  If.  Stanislavsky,  one  of  the  chief  actors  of  the 
troupe  and  the  stage  manager,  gave  me  his  place.  The  theatre 
was  crammed.  There  is  a  scene  in  the  play  where  a  doctor, 
living  in  a  Russian  village,  and  devoting  his  life  to  the  welfare 
of  the  peasants,  is  suspected  of  having  caused  an  outbreak 
of  cholera.  The  infuriated  peasants  pursue  the  doctor  and 
bash  someone  on  the  head.  On  the  first  night  this  scene 
reduced  a  part  of  the  audience  to  hysterics.  It  was  too 
"  actual."  People  said  they  saw  enough  of  their  friends  killed 
in  the  streets  without  going  to  the  play  for  such  a  sight.  On  the 
second  night  it  was  said  that  the  offensive  scene  had  been  sup- 
pressed. I  did  not  quite  understand  what  had  been  eliminated. 
As  I  saw  the  scene  it  was  played  as  follows:  A  roar  i>  heard  as 
of  an  angry  crowd.  Then  tin'  doctor  runs  into  a  house  and  hides. 
The  master  of  the  house  protests  ;  a  peasant  Hies  at  his  throat 
and  half  strangles  him  until  he  is  beaten  on  the  head  by  another 
peasant  who  belongs  to  the  house.  The  play  was  full  of  in- 
teresting moments,  ami  was  played  with  finished  perfection. 
But  Gorky  had  not  Tchekov's  talent  of  representing  on  the 
stage  the  uneventful  passage  of  time,  the  succession  of  the  seem- 
ingly insignificant  incidents  of  people'-  everyday  lives,  chosen 
with  such  skill,  depicted  with  such  an  instinct  for  mood  and 


324  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

atmosphere  that  the  result  is  enthrallingly  interesting.  Gorky's 
plays  have  the  faults  and  qualities  of  his  stories.  They  are  un- 
equal, but  contain  moments  of  poignant  interest  and  vividness. 

The  next  night  (8th  November)  I  went  to  St.  Petersburg. 
There  I  saw  Spring-Rice,  Dr.  Dillon,  and  heard  Fidelio  at  the 
opera.  The  young  lions  in  the  gallery  did  not  realise  that 
Fidelio  is  a  revolutionary  opera  and  the  complete  expression 
of  the  "  Liberation  movement  "  in  Germany. 

A  Post  Office  strike,  followed  by  a  strike  of  other  unions, 
was  going  on,  and  one  night  while  I  was  at  the  OpeYa  Bouffe, 
where  the  Country  Girl  was  being  given,  the  electric  light  went 
out.  The  performance  continued  all  the  same,  the  actors 
holding  bedroom  candles  in  their  hands,  while  the  auditorium 
remained  in  the  dimmest  of  twilights. 

I  stayed  in  St.  Petersburg  till  the  21st  of  November,  when 
I  went  to  London.  I  travelled  to  the  frontier  with  a  Japanese 
Military  Attache  and  a  Russian  student.  We  three  passengers 
had  a  curious  conversation.  The  Japanese  gentleman  rarely 
spoke,  but  he  nodded  civilly,  and  made  a  sneezing  noise  every 
now  and  then.  The  student  talked  of  English  literature  with 
warm  enthusiasm.  His  two  favourite  English  modern  authors 
were  Jerome  K.  Jerome  and  Oscar  Wilde.  When  I  showed 
some  surprise  at  this  choice,  he  said  I  probably  only  thought 
of  Jerome  as  a  comic  author.  I  said  that  was  the  case. 
"  Then,"  he  said,  "  you  have  not  read  Paul  K elver,  which  is 
a  masterpiece,  a  real  human  book — a  great  book." 

When  we  got  out  at  the  frontier  the  Japanese  officer  wanted 
to  fetch  something  but  as  there  was  no  porter  in  sight,  was 
loath  to  leave  his  bag.  The  student  offered  to  keep  watch 
over  it,  but  the  Japanese  would  not  trust  him  to  do  this,  and 
stood  by  his  bag  till  a  porter  arrived.  The  student  was 
astonished  and  slightly  hurt. 

After  I  had  stayed  a  little  over  a  fortnight  in  London  I 
went  back  first  to  St.  Petersburg,  then  to  Moscow. 

I  had  not  been  two  days  in  Moscow  before  there  was 
another  strike.  It  began  on  Wednesday,  the  20th  of  December, 
punctually  at  midday.  The  lift  ceased  working  in  the  hotel, 
the  electric  light  was  turned  off,  and  I  laid  in  a  large  store  of 
books  and  cigarettes  against  coming  events.  The  strike  was 
said  to  be  an  answer  to  the  summary  proceedings  of  the  Govern- 
ment  and  its  action  in  arresting  leaders  of  the  revolutionary 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  325 

committee.      Its    watchword    was    to    be  :     "  A    Constituent 

Assembly  based  upon  universal  suffrage."  Beyond  the  electric 
light  going  out,  nothing  happened  on  this  day.  On  Thursday, 
the  21st,  most  of  the  shops  began  to  shut.  The  man  who 
cleaned  the  boots  in  the  hotel  made  the  following  remark  : 
'  I  now  understand  that  the  people  exeri  ise  great  power."  1 
heard  a  shot  fired  somewhere  from  the  hotel  at  nine  o'clock 
in  the  evening.  I  asked  the  hall  porter  whether  the  theai 
were  open.  He  said  they  were  shut,  and  added  :  "  And  who 
would  dream  of  going  to  the  theatre  in  these  time*  of  -tress  ?  ' 

The  next  day  I  drove  with  Marie  Karlovna  von  Kotz  into 
the  country  to  a  village  called  Chernaya,  about  twenty-five 
versts  from  Moscow  on  the  Novgorod  road,  which  before  tin- 
days  of  railway*  was  famous  for  its  highway  robberies  and 
assaults  on  the  rich  merchants  by  the  hooligans  of  that  day. 
We  drove  in  a  big  wooden  sledge  drawn  by  two  horses,  the 
coachman  standing  up  all  the  while.  We  went  to  visit  two 
old  maids,  who  were  peasants  and  lived  in  the  village.  One 
of  them  had  got  stranded  in  Moscow,  and,  owing  to  the  railway 
strike,  was  unable  to  go  back  again,  and  so  we  took  her  with 
us  ;  otherwise  she  would  have  walked  home.  We  started 
at  10.30  and  arrived  at  1.30.  The  road  was  absolutely  still 
— a  thick  carpet  of  snow,  upon  which  fresh  flakes  drifting  in 
the  fitful  gusts  of  wind  fell  gently.  Looking  at  the  drifting 
Hakes  which  seemed  to  be  tossed  about  in  the  air,  the  first 
old  maid  said  that  a  man's  life  was  like  a  snowflake  in  the 
wind,  and  that  she  had  never  thought  she  would  go  home 
with  us  on  her  sister's  name-day. 

When  we  arrived  at  the  village  we  found  a  meal  ready  for 
us,  which,  although  the  fast  of  Advent  was  being  strictly 
observed  and  the  food  made  with  fasting  butter,  was  far  from 
jejune.  It  consisted  of  pies  with  rice  and  cabbage  inside, 
and  cold  fish  and  tea  and  jam,  and  some  vodka  for  me — the 
guest.  The  cottage  consisted  of  one  room  and  two  very  small 
ante-rooms — the  walls,  floors,  and  ceilings  of  plain  deal.  Five 
or  six  rich  ikons  hung  in  the  comer  of  the  room,  and  a  coloured 
oleograph  of  Lather  John  of  Kronstadt  on  one  of  the  wall*. 
A  large  stove  heated  the  room.  Soon  some  guests  arrived 
to  congratulate  old  maid  No.  2  on  her  name-day,  and  after 
a  time  the  pope  entered,  blessed  the  room,  and  sat  down  to 
tea.     We  talked  of  the  strike,  and  how  quiet  the  country  was, 


326  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  of  the  hooligans  in  the  town.     "  No,"  said  the  pope,  with 
gravity,    "  we    have  our  own  hooligans."     A  little  later  the 
village  schoolmaster  arrived,  who  looked  about  twenty  years 
old,  and  was  a  little  tiny  man  with  a  fresh  face  and  gold-rimmed 
spectacles,  with  his  wife,  who,  like  the  aesthetic  lady  in  Gilbert 
and   Sullivan's  Patience,  was  "  massive."     I  asked  the  pope 
if  I  could  live  unmolested  in  this  village.     He  said :  "  Yes  ; 
but  if  you  want  to  work  you  won't  be  quiet  in  this  house, 
because  your    two    hostesses  chatter  and  drink  tea  all  day 
and  all  night."     At  three  o'clock  we  thought  we  had  better 
be  starting  home  ;   it  was  getting  dark,  the  snow  was  falling 
heavily.     The  old  maids  said  we  couldn't  possibly  go.     We 
should  (i)  lose  our  way  ;    (2)  be  robbed   by  tramps ;   (3)  be 
massacred  by  strikers  on  the  railway  line ;  (4)  not  be  allowed 
to  enter  the  town  ;  (5)  be  attacked  by  hooligans  when  we  reached 
the  dark  streets.     We  sent  for  Vassili,  the  coachman,  to  consult 
with    him.     "  Can   you   find  your  way  home  ?  "   we   asked. 
'  Yes,  I  can,"  he  said.     "  Shall  we  lose  our  way  ?  "     "  We 
might  lose  our  way — it  happens,"  he  said  slowly — "  it  happens 
times  and  again  ;  but  we  might  not — it  often  doesn't  happen." 
"  Might    we    be   attacked   on   the   way  ?  "     "  We   might — it 
happens — they  attack  ;    but  we  might  not — sometimes  they 
don't  attack."     "  Are  the  horses  tired  ?  "     "  Yes,  the  horses 
are  tired."     "  Then   we  had  better  not   go."     "  The   horses 
can  go  all  right,"  he  said.     Then  we  thought  we  would  stay  ; 
but  Vassili  said  that  his  master  would  curse  him  if  he  stayed 
unless  we  "  added  "  something. 

So  we  settled  to  stay,  and  the  schoolmaster  took  us  to  see 
the  village  school,  which  was  clean,  roomy,  and  altogether 
an  excellent  home  of  learning.  Then  he  took  us  to  a  neigh- 
bouring factory  which  had  not  struck,  and  in  which  he  presided 
over  a  night  class  for  working  men  and  women.  From  here 
we  telephoned  to  Moscow,  and  learned  that  everything  was 
quiet  in  the  city.  I  talked  to  one  of  the  men  in  the  factory 
about  the  strike.  "  It's  all  very  well  for  the  young  men,"  one 
of  them  said  ;  "  they  are  hot-headed  and  like  striking  ;  but  we 
have  to  starve  for  a  month.  That's  what  it  means."  Then 
we  went  to  the  school  neighbouring  the  factory  where  the  night 
class  was  held.  There  were  two  rooms — one  for  men,  presided 
over  by  the  schoolmaster  ;  and  one  for  women,  presided  over 
by  his  wife.     They  had  a  lesson  of  two  hours  in  reading,  writing, 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  327 

and  arithmetic.  The  men  came  to  be  taught  in  separate 
batches,  one  batch  coming  one  week,  one  another.  This 
day  there  were  five  men  and  two  boys  and  six  women.  The 
men  were  reading  a  story  about  a  bear — rather  a  tedious  tale. 
"  Yes,  we  are  reading,"  one  of  them  said  to  me,  "  and  we 
understand  some  of  it."  That  was,  at  any  rate,  consoling. 
They  read  to  themselves  first,  then  aloud  in  turn,  standing  up, 
and  then  they  were  asked  to  tell  what  they  had  read  in  their 
own  words.  They  read  haltingly,  with  difficulty  grasping 
familiar  words.  They  related  fluently,  except  one  man,  who 
said  he  could  remember  nothing  whatsoever  about  the  doings 
of  the  bear.  One  little  boy  was  doing  with  lightning  rapidity 
those  kinds  of  sums  which,  by  giving  you  too  many  data  and 
not  enough — a  superabundance  of  detail,  leaving  out  the  all 
that  seems  to  be  imperatively  necessary — are  to  some  minds 
peculiarly  insoluble.  The  sum  in  question  stated  that  a 
factory  consisted  of  770  hands — men,  women,  and  children — 
and  that  the  men  received  half  as  much  again  as  the  women,  etc. 
That  particular  proportion  of  wages  seems  to  exi>t  in  the 
arithmetic  books  of  all  countries,  to  the  despair  of  the  non- 
mathematical,  and  the  little  boy  insisted  on  my  following 
every  step  of  his  process  of  reckoning  ;  but  not  even  he  with 
the  wisdom  and  sympathy  of  babes  succeeded  in  teaclung  me 
how  to  do  that  kind  of  sum.  He  afterwards  wrote  in  a  copy- 
book pages  of  declensions  of  Russian  nouns  and  adjectives. 
Here  I  found  I  could  help  him,  and  I  saved  him  some  trouble 
by  dictating  them  to  him  ;  though  every  now  and  then  we  had 
some  slight  doubt  and  discussion  about  the  genitive  plural. 
In  the  women's  class,  one  girl  explained  to  us,  with  tears  in 
her  eyes,  how  difficult  it  was  for  her  to  attend  this  class.  Her 
fellow-workers  laughed  at  her  for  it,  and  at  home  they  told 
her  that  a  woman's  place  was  to  be  at  work  and  not  to  meddle 
with  books.  Those  who  attended  this  school  showed  that  they 
were  really  anxious  to  learn,  as  the  effort  and  self-sacrifice 
needed  were  great. 

We  stayed  till  the  end  of  the  lesson,  and  then  we  went  home, 
where  an  excellent  supper  of  eggs,  etc.,  was  awaiting  us.  We 
found  the  two  old  maids  and  their  first  cousin,  who  told  us  she 
was  about  to  go  to  law  for  a  legacy  of  100,000  roubles  which  had 
been  left  her,  but  which  was  disputed  by  a  more  distant  relation 
on  the  mother's  side.     We  talked  of  lawsuits  and  politics  and 


328  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

miracles,  and  real  and  false  faith-healers,  till  bedtime  came. 
A  bed  was  made  for  me  alongside  of  the  stove.  Made  is  the 
right  word,  for  it  was  literally  built  up  before  my  eyes.  A 
sleeping-place  was  also  made  for  the  coachman  on  the  floor  of 
the  small  ante-room  ;  then  the  rest  of  the  company  disappeared 
to  sleep.  I  say  disappeared,  because  I  literally  do  not  know 
where  in  this  small  interior  there  was  room  for  them  to  sleep. 
They  consisted  of  the  two  old  maids,  their  niece  and  her  little 
girl,  aged  three,  and  another  little  girl,  aged  seven.  Marie 
Karlovna  slept  in  the  room,  but  the  rest  disappeared,  I  suppose 
on  the  top  of  the  stove,  only  it  seemed  to  reach  the  ceiling  ; 
somewhere  they  were,  for  the  little  girl,  excited  by  the  events 
of  the  day,  sang  snatches  of  song  till  a  late  hour  in  the  night. 
The  next  morning,  after  I  got  up,  the  room  was  transformed 
from  a  bedroom  into  a  dining-room  and  aired,  breakfast  was 
served,  and  at  ten  we  started  back  again  in  the  snow  to 
Moscow.  *" 

On  the  23rd  we  arrived  in  the  town  at  one  o'clock.  The 
streets  of  the  suburbs  seemed  to  be  unusually  still.  Marie 
Karlovna  said  to  me  :  "  How  quiet  the  streets  are,  but  it  seems 
to  me  an  uncanny,  evil  quietness."  Marie  Karlovna  lived  in 
the  Lobkovsky  Pereulok,  and  I  had  the  day  before  sent  my 
things  from  the  hotel  to  an  apartment  in  the  adjoining  street, 
the  Mwilnikov.  When  we  arrived  at  the  entrance  of  these 
streets,  we  found  them  blocked  by  a  crowd  and  guarded  by 
police  and  dragoons.  We  got  through  the  other  end  of  the 
street,  and  we  were  told  that  the  night  before  Fiedler's  School, 
which  was  a  large  building  at  the  corner  of  these  two  streets,  had 
been  the  scene  of  a  revolutionary  meeting  ;  that  the  revolution- 
aries had  been  surrounded  in  this  house,  had  refused  to  surrender, 
had  thrown  a  bomb  at  an  officer  and  killed  him,  had  been  fired 
at  by  artillery,  and  had  surrendered  after  killing  1  officer 
and  5  men,  with  17  casualties — 15  wounded  and  2  killed. 
All  this  had  happened  in  my  very  street  during  my  absence. 
An  hour  later  we  again  heard  a  noise  of  guns,  and  an  armed 
rising  (some  of  the  leaders  of  which,  who  were  to  have  seized  the 
Governor-General  of  the  town  and  set  up  a  provisional  Govern- 
ment, had  been  arrested  the  night  before  in  my  street)  had 
broken  out  in  all  parts  of  the  town  in  spite  of  the  arrests.  A 
little  later  I  saw  a  crowd  of  people  on  foot  and  in  sledges  flying 
in  panic  down  the  street  shouting  :  "  Kazaki !  "     I  heard  and  saw 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  329 

nothing  else  of  any  interest  during  the  day.     There  were  crowds 
of  people  in  the  streets  till  nightfall. 

On  Sunday,  Christmas  Eve,  I  drove  to  the  Hotel  Dresden 
in  the  centre  of  Moscow  to  see  Mamonov.  The  aspect  of  the 
town  was  extraordinary.  The  streets  were  full  of  people — 
Jl  Incurs  who  were  either  walking  about  or  gathered  together  in 
small  or  large  groups  at  the  street  corners.  Distant,  and  some- 
times quite  near,  sounds  of  firing  were  audible,  and  nobody  seemed 
to  care  a  scrap  ;  they  were  everywhere  talking,  discussing,  and 
laughing.  Imagine  the  difference  between  this  and  the  scenes 
described  in  Paris  during  the  street  fighting  in  '32,  '48,  and  '71. 

People  went  about  their  business  just  as  usual.     If  there 
was  a  barricade  they  drove  round  it.    The  cabmen  never  dreamt 
of  not  going  anywhere,  although  one  of  them  said  to  me  that 
it    was   most    alarming.      Moreover,  an   insuperable  curiosity 
seemed  to  lead  them  to  go  and  look  where  things  were  happen- 
ing.    Several  were  lolled  in  this  way\     On  the  other  hand,  at 
the  slightest  approach  of  troops  they  ran  in  panic  like  hares, 
although  the  troops  did  not  do  the  passers-by  any  mischief. 
Two  or  three  times  I  was  walking  in  the  streets  when  dragoons 
galloped  past,  and  came  to  no  harm.    We  heard  shots  all  the  time, 
and  met  the  same  groups  of  people  and  passed  two  barricades. 
The  barricades  were  mostly  not  like  those  of   the   Faubourg 
St.  Antoine,  but  small  impediments  made  of  branches  and  an 
overturned  sledge  ;  they  were  put  there  to  annoy  and  wear  out 
the  troops  and  not  to  stand  siege.     The  revolutionaries  adopted 
a   guerilla   street   warfare.     They   fired   or  threw  bombs  and 
rapidly  dispersed  ;    they  made   some  attempts  to  seize   the 
Nikolayev  Railway  Station,  but  in  all  cases  they  were  repulsed. 
The  attitude  of  the  man  in  the  street  was  curious  ;  sometimes 
he  was  indignant  with  the  strikers,  sometimes  indignant  with 
the    Government.     If   you    asked    a    person    of    revolutionary 
sympathies  he  told  you  that  sympathy  was  entirely  with  the 
revolution  ;  if  you  asked  a  person  of  moderate  principles,  he  told 
you  that  the  "  people  "  were  indignant  with  the  strikers  ;   but 
the  attitude  of  the  average  man  in  the  street  seemed  to  me  one 
of  sceptical  indifference  in  spite  of  all — in  spite  of  trade  ceasing, 
houses  being  fired  at,  and  the  hospitals  being  full  to  overflowing 
of  dead  and  wounded.     The  fact  was  that  disorders  had  lost  their 
first  power  of  creating  an  impression  ;    they  had  become  an 
everyday  occurrence. 


330  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Here  are  various  remarks  I  heard.     One  man,  a  commis- 
sionaire, asked  whether  I  thought  it  was  right  to  fire  on  the 
revolutionaries.     I  hesitated,  gathering  my  thoughts  to  explain 
that  I  thought  that  they  thoroughly  deserved  it  since  they 
began  it,  but  that  the  Government  nevertheless  had  brought 
it  about  by  their  dilatoriness.     (This  is  exactly  what  I  thought.) 
Misunderstanding   my   hesitation,  he   said :    "  Surely   you,   a 
foreigner,  need  not  mind  saying  what  you  think,  and  you  know 
it    is    wrong."      (This    was    curious,    because  these    people — 
commissionaires,    porters,    etc. — were    often    reactionary.)     A 
cabman  said  to  me :  "  Who  do  you  think  will  get  the  best  of 
it  ?  "    I  said  :  "  I  don't  know  ;  what  do  you  think  ?  "    "  Nothing 
will  come  of  it,"  he  said.     "  There  will  still  be  rich  people  like 
you  and  poor  people  like  me  ;    and  whether  the  Government 
is  in  the  hands  of  the  chinovniks  or  the  students  is  all  one  and 
the  same."     Another  man,  a  porter,  an  ex-soldier,  said  it  was 
awful.     You  couldn't  go  anywhere  or  drive  anywhere  without 
risking  being  killed.     Soldiers  came  back  from  the  war  and 
were  killed  in  the  streets.     A  bullet  came,  and  then  the  man  was 
done  for.     Another  man,  a  kind  of  railway  employee,  said  that 
the  Russians  had  no  stamina  ;  that  the  Poles  would  never  give 
in,  but  the  Russians  would  directly.     Mamonov,  who  was  fond 
of  paradox,  said  to  me  that   he  hoped  all  the  fanatics  would 
be  shot,  and  that  then  the  Government  would  be  upset.      A 
policeman  was  guarding  the  street  which  led  to  the  hotel.     I 
asked  if  I  could  pass.     "  How  could  I  not  let  a  Barine  with 
whom  I  am  acquainted  pass  ?  "  he  said.     Then  a  baker's  boy 
came  up  with  a  tray  of  rolls  on  his  head,  also  asking  to  pass — 
to  go  to  the  hotel.     After  some  discussion  the  policeman  let 
him  go,  but  suddenly  said :  "  Or  are  you  a  rascal  ?  "     Then  I 
asked  him  what  he  thought  of  it  all.    He  said  :  "  We  fire  as  little 
as  possible.     They  are  fools."     The  wealthier  and  educated 
classes  were  either  intensely  sympathetic  or  violently  indignant 
with  the  revolutionaries ;   the  lower  classes   were  sceptically 
resigned  or  indifferent — "  Things  are  bad  ;  nothing  will  come 
of  it  for  us." 

At  midnight  the  windows  of  our  house  had  been  shaken  by 
the  firing  of  guns  somewhere  near  ;  but  on  Christmas  morning 
(not  the  Russian  Christmas)  one  could  get  about.  I  drove 
down  one  of  the  principal  streets,  the  Kuznetski  Most,  into 
another  large  street,  the  Neglinii  Proiesd  (as  if  it  were  down 


LONDON,  MANCHURIA,  RUSSIA  331 

Bond  Street  into  Piccadilly),  when  suddenly  in  a  flash  all  the 
cabs  began  to  drive  fast  up  the  street.  My  cabman  went  on. 
He  was  inquisitive.  We  saw  nothing.  He  shouted  to  another 
cabman,  asking  him  what  was  the  matter.  No  answer.  We 
went  a  little  farther  down,  when  along  the  Neglinii  Proiesd  we 
saw  a  patrol  and  guns  advancing.  "  Go  back,"  shouted  one  of 
the  soldiers,  waving  his  rifle — and  away  we  went.  Later,  I 
believe  there  was  firing  there.  Farther  along  we  met  more 
patrols  and  ambulances.  The  shops  were  not  only  shut  but 
boarded  up. 

Next  day  I  walked  to  the  Nikolayev  Station  in  the  afternoon. 
It  was  from  there  that  the  trains  went  to  St.  Petersburg.  The 
trains  were  running  then,  but  how  the  passengers  started  I 
didn't  know,  for  it  was  impossible  to  get  near  the  station.  Cabs 
were  galloping  away  from  it,  and  the  square  in  front  of  it  had 
been  cleared  by  Cossacks.  I  think  it  was  attacked  that  after- 
noon. I  walked  into  the  Riask  Station,  which  was  next  door. 
It  was  a  scene  of  desolation  ;  empty  trains,  stacked-up  luggage, 
third-class  passengers  encamped  in  the  waiting-room.  There 
was  a  perpetual  noise  of  firing.  The  town  was  under  martial 
law.  Nobody  was  allowed  to  be  out  of  doors  after  nine 
o'clock  under  penalty  of  three  months'  imprisonment  or  a  3000 
roubles  fine.  Householders  were  made  responsible  for  people 
firing  out  of  their  windows. 

On  the  morning  of  27th  December  there  was  considerable 
movement  and  traffic  in  the  streets  ;  the  small  shops  and 
the  tobacconists  were  open.  Firing  was  still  going  on.  They 
said  a  factory  was  being  attacked.  The  troops  who  were  sup- 
posed to  be  disaffected  proved  loyal.  The  one  way  to  make 
them  loyal  was  to  throw  bombs  at  them.  The  policemen  were 
then  armed  with  rifles  and  bayonets.  A  cabman  said  to  me  : 
"  There  is  an  illness  abroad — we  are  sick  ;  it  will  pass — but  God 
remains."     I  agreed  with  him. 


CHAPTER    XVII 
RUSSIA :  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION 

I  SPENT  all  the  winter  of  1905-6  at  Moscow  with  occa- 
sional visits  to  St.  Petersburg  and  to  the  country.  The 
strikes  were  over,  but  it  was  in  a  seething,  restless 
state.  Count  Witte  was  Prime  Minister.  When  he  took  office 
after  making  peace  with  the  Japanese  he  was  idolised  as  a 
hero,  but  he  soon  lost  his  popularity  and  his  prestige.  He  satis- 
fied neither  the  revolutionaries  nor  the  reactionaries,  and  he 
was  neither  King  Log  nor  King  Stork.  Elections  were  held 
in  the  spring  for  the  convening  of  the  Duma,  the  first  Russian 
Parliament,  but  they  were  not  looked  upon  with  confidence  and 
they  were  boycotted  by  the  more  extreme  parties.  Russia 
was  swarming  with  political  parties,  but  of  all  these  divisions 
and  subdivisions,  each  with  its  programme  and  its  watchword, 
there  were  only  two  which  had  any  importance :  the  Con- 
stitutional Democrats  called  Kadets,1  which  represented  the 
Intelligentsia,  and  the  Labour  Party,  which  represented  the 
artisans  and  out  of  which  the  Bolsheviks  were  ultimately  to 
grow.     The  peasants  stood  aloof,  and  remained  separate. 

None  of  these  parties  produced  either  a  statesman  or  remark- 
able man.  There  were  any  amount  of  clever  men  and  fine 
orators  in  their  ranks,  but  no  man  of  action. 

A  man  of  action  did  ultimately  appear,  but  in  the  ranks  of 
the  Government — P.  A.  Stolypin — and  he  governed  Russia  for 
several  years,  till  he  was  murdered. 

At  Moscow  I  had  two  little  rooms  in  the  Mwilnikov  pereulok 
on  the  ground  floor.  I  was  now  a  regular  correspondent  to  the 
Morning  Post,  and  used  to  send  them  a  letter  once  a  week. 
Their  St.  Petersburg  correspondent  was  Harold  Monro,  who 
wrote  fiction  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  Saki." 

The  stories  that  Monro  wrote  under  the  name  of  "  Saki  "  in 

1  i.e.  K.D.'s — constitution  in  Russian  beginning  with  a  "  K." 

332 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION         333 

t  he  Westminster  Gazette  and  t  he Morning  Post  attracted  when  they 
came  out  in  these  newspapers,  and  afterwards  when  they  were 
republished,  a  considerable  amount  of  attention  ;  but  because 
they  were  witty,  light,  and  ironical,  and  sometimes  flippant,  few 
people  took  "  Saki  "  seriously  as  an  artist.  I  venture  to  think 
he  was  an  artist  of  a  high  order,  and  had  his  stories  reached 
the  public  from  Vienna  or  Paris,  there  would  have  been  an 
artistic  boom  round  his  work  of  a  deafening  nature. 

As  it  is,  people  dismissed  him  as  a  funny  writer.  Funny  he- 
was,  both  in  his  books  and  in  his  conversation  ;  irresistibly 
witty  and  droll  sometimes,  sometimes  ecstatically  silly,  so  that 
he  made  you  almost  cry  for  laughter,  but  he  was  more  than 
that — he  was  a  thoughtful  and  powerful  satirist,  an  astonishing 
observer  of  human  nature,  with  the  power  of  delineating  the 
pathos  and  the  irony  underlying  the  relations  of  human  beings 
in  everyday  life  with  exquisite  delicacy  and  a  strong  sureness 
of  touch.  A  good  example  of  his  wit  is  his  answer  when  a  lady 
asked  him  how  his  book  could  begot :  "  Not  at  an  ironmonger^." 
His  satire  is  seen  at  its  strongest  in  the  fantasy,  When  William 
Came,  in  which  he  describes  England  under  German  domina- 
tion, but  the  book  in  which  his  many  gifts  and  his  intuition 
for  human  things  are  mingled  in  the  finest  blend  is  perhaps 
The  Unbearable  Bassinglon,  which  is  a  masterpiece  of  character- 
drawing,  irony,  and  pathos.  And  yet  in  literary  circles  in 
London,  or  at  dinner-parties  where  you  would  hear  people  rave 
over  some  turgid  piece  of  fiction,  that  because  it  was  sordid  was 
thought  to  be  profound,  and  would  probably  be  forgotten  in 
a  year's  time,  you  would  never  have  heard  "  Saki "  mentioned 
as  an  artist  to  be  taken  seriously. 

"  No  one  will  buy."  as  the  seller  of  gold-fish  remarked  at 
the  fair — "  no  one  will  buy  the  little  gold-fish,  for  men  do  not 
recognise  the  gifts  of  Heaven,  the  magical  gifts,  when  they 
meet  them." 

Nobody  sought  the  suffrages  of  the  literary  and  artistic 
circle  less  than  "Saki."  I  think  he  would  have  been  pleased 
with  genuine  ^erious  recognition,  as  every  artist  would  be, 
but  the  false  reclame  and  the  chatter  of  coteries  bored  him  to 
extinction. 

In  1914  he  showed  what  he  was  really  made  of  by  enlisting 
in  the  army,  and  he  was  killed  in  the  war  as  a  corporal  after  he 
had  several  times  refused  a  commission. 


334  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

I  spent  Easter  in  Moscow,  and  this  was  one  of  the  most 
impressive  experiences  I  ever  had. 

I  have  spent  Easter  in  various  cities — in  Rome,  Florence, 
Athens,  and  Hildesheim — and  although  in  each  of  these  places 
the  feast  has  its  own  peculiar  aspect,  yet  by  far  the  most  impres- 
sive and  the  most  interesting  celebration  of  the  Easter  festival 
I  have  ever  witnessed  was  that  of  Moscow.  This  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at,  for  Easter  is  the  most  important  feast  of  the  year 
in  Russia,  the  season  of  festivity  and  holiday-making  in  a 
greater  degree  than  Christmas  or  New  Year's  Day.  Secondly, 
Easter,  which  is  kept  with  equal  solemnity  all  over  Russia, 
was  especially  interesting  in  Moscow,  because  Moscow  is  the 
stronghold  of  old  traditions  and  the  city  of  churches.  Even 
more  than  Cologne,  it  is 

"  Die  Stadt  die  viele  hundert 
Kapellen  und   Kirehen  hat." 

There  is  a  church  almost  in  every  street,  and  the  Kremlin  is  a 

citadel  of  cathedrals.     During  Holy  Week,  towards  the  end  of 

which  the  evidences  of  the  fasting  season  grow  more  and  more 

obvious  by  the  closing  of  restaurants  and  the  impossibility  of 

buying  any  wine  and  spirits,  there  were,  of  course,  services 

every  day.     During  the  first  three  days  of  Holy  Week  there 

was  a  curious  ceremony  to  be  seen  in  the  Kremlin,  which  was 

held  every  two  years.     This  was  the  preparation  of  the  chrism 

or  holy  oil.     While  it  was  slowly  stirred  and  churned  in  great 

cauldrons,  filling  the  room  with  hot  fragrance,  a  deacon  read 

the  Gospel  without  ceasing  (he  was  relieved  at  intervals  by 

others),  and  this  lasted  day  and  night  for  three  days.     On 

Maundy  Thursday  the  chrism  was  removed  in  silver  vessels  to 

the  Cathedral.     The  supply  had  to  last  the  whole  of  Russia 

for  two  years.    I  went  to  the  morning  service  in  the  Cathedral 

of  the  Assumption  on  Maundy  Thursday.     The  church  was 

crowded  to  suffocation.     Everybody  stood  up,  as  there  was  no 

room  to  kneel.     The  church  was  lit  with  countless  small  wax 

tapers.     The  priests  were  clothed  in  white  and  silver.     The 

singing  of  the  noble  plain  chant  without  any  accompaniment 

ebbed  and  flowed  in  perfect  discipline  ;   the  bass  voices  were 

unequalled  in  the  world.     Every  class  of  the  population  was 

represented  in  the  church.     There  were  no  seats,  no  pews, 

no  precedence  nor  privilege.     There  was  a  smell  of  incense  and 


tin-:  beginning  or  the  revolution      335 

a  still  stronger  smell  of  poor  people,  without  which,  someone 
said,  a  church  is  not  a  church.  On  Good  Friday  there  was  the 
service  of  the  Holy  Shroud,  and  1  i  -idrs  this  a  later  servi<  e  in 
which  the  Gospel  was  read  out  in  fourteen  different  languag 
and  finally  a  service  beginning  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning 
and  ending  at  four,  to  commemorate  the  Burial  of  Our  Lord. 
How  the  priests  endured  the  -train  of  these  many  and  exceed- 
ingly long  services  was  a  thing  to  be  wondered  at  ;  for  the  fast, 
which  was  kept  strictly  during  all  this  period,  precluded  butter, 
eggs,  and  milk,  in  addition  to  all  the  more  solid  forms  of  nourish- 
ment, and  the  services  were  about  six  times  as  long  as  those  of 
the  Catholic  or  other  churches. 

The  most  solemn  service  of  the  year  took  place  at  midnight 
on  Saturday  in  Easter  week.  From  eight  until  ten  o'clock 
the  town,  which  during  the  day  had  been  crowded  with  people 
buying  provisions  and  presents  and  Easter  eggs,  seemed  to  be 
asleep  and  dead.  At  about  ten  people  began  to  stream  towards 
the  Kremlin.  At  eleven  o'clock  there  was  already  a  dense 
crowd,  many  of  the  people  holding  lighted  tapers,  waiting 
outside  in  the  square,  between  the  Cathedral  of  the  Assumption 
and  that  of  Ivan  Veliki.  A  little  before  twelve  the  cathedrals 
and  palaces  on  the  Kremlin  were  all  lighted  up  with  ribbons  of 
various  coloured  lights.  Twelve  o'clock  struck,  and  then  the 
bell  of  Ivan  Veliki  began  to  boom  :  a  beautiful,  full-voiced, 
immense  volume  of  sound — a  sound  which  Clara  Schumann  said 
was  the  most  beautiful  she  had  ever  heard.  It  was  answered 
by  other  bells,  and  a  little  later  all  the  bells  of  all  the 
churches  in  Moscow  were  ringing  together.  Then  from  the 
Cathedral  came  the  procession  :  first,  the  singers  in  crimson 
and  gold  ;  the  bearers  of  the  gilt  banners  ;  the  Metropolitan, 
also  in  stilt  vestments  of  crimson  and  gold  ;  and  after  him  the 
officials  in  their  uniforms.  They  walked  round  the  Cathedral 
to  look  for  the  Body  of  Our  Lord,  and  returned  to  the  Cathedral 
to  tell  thcnew>  thai  He  was  risen.  The  guns  went  off,  rockets 
were  fired,  and  illuminations  were  seen  across  the  river,  light- 
ing up  the  distant  cupola  of  the  great  Church  of  the  Saviour 
with  a  cloud  of  tire. 

The  crowd  began  to  disperse  and  to  pour  into  the  various 
churches.  I  went  to  the  Manege — an  enormous  riding  school, 
in  which  the  Ekaterinoslav  Regiment  had  its  church.  Half  the 
building  looked  like  a  fair.     Long  tables,  twinkling  with  hun- 


336  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

dreds  of  wax  tapers,  were  loaded  with  the  three  articles  of  food 
which  were  eaten  at  Easter — a  huge  cake  called  kulich  ;  a  kind 
of  sweet  cream  made  of  curds  and  eggs,  cream  and  sugar,  called 
Paskha  (Easter)  ;  and  Easter  eggs,  dipped  and  dyed  in  many 
colours.  They  were  waiting  to  be  blessed.  The  church  itself 
was  a  tiny  little  recess  on  one  side  of  the  building.  There  the 
priests  were  officiating,  and  down  below  in  the  centre  of  the 
building  the  whole  regiment  was  drawn  up.  There  were  two 
services — a  service  which  began  at  midnight  and  lasted  about 
half  an  hour  ;  and  Mass,  which  followed  immediately  after  it, 
lasting  till  about  three  in  the  morning.  At  the  end  of  the  first 
service,  when  the  words,  "  Christ  is  risen,"  were  sung,  the 
priest  kissed  the  deacon  three  times,  and  then  the  members  of 
the  congregation  kissed  each  other,  one  person  saying,  "  Christ 
is  risen,"  and  the  other  answering,  "  He  is  risen,  indeed."  The 
colonel  kissed  the  sergeant  ;  the  sergeant  kissed  all  the  men 
one  after  another.  While  this  ceremony  was  proceeding,  I 
left  and  went  to  the  Church  of  the  Saviour,  where  the  first 
service  was  not  yet  over.  Here  the  crowd  was  so  dense  that 
it  was  almost  impossible  to  get  into  the  church,  although  it 
was  immense.  The  singing  in  this  church  was  ineffable.  I 
waited  until  the  end  of  the  first  service,  and  then  I  was  borne 
by  the  crowd  to  one  of  the  narrow  entrances  and  hurled  through 
the  doorway  outside.  The  crowd  was  not  rough  ;  they  were 
not  jostling  one  another,  but  with  cheerful  carelessness  people 
dived  into  it  as  you  dive  into  a  scrimmage  at  football,  and 
propelled  the  unresisting  herd  towards  the  entrance,  the  result 
being,  of  course,  that  a  mass  of  people  got  wedged  into  the 
doorway,  and  the  process  of  getting  out  took  longer  than  it 
need  have  done  ;  and  had  there  been  a  panic,  nothing  could 
have  prevented  people  being  crushed  to  death.  After  this  I 
went  to  a  friend's  house  to  break  the  fast  and  eat  kulich,  Paskha, 
and  Easter  eggs,  and  finally  returned  home  when  the  dawn 
was  faintly  shining  on  the  dark  waters  of  the  Moscow  River, 
whence  the  ice  had  only  lately  disappeared. 

In  the  morning  people  came  to  bring  me  Easter  greetings, 
and  to  give  me  Easter  eggs,  and  to  receive  gifts.  I  was  writing 
in  my  sitting-room  and  I  heard  a  faint  mutter  in  the  next  room, 
a  small  voice  murmuring,  Gospodi,  Gospodi  ("  Lord,  Lord  "). 
I  went  to  see  who  it  was,  and  found  it  was  the  policeman,  sighing 
for  his  tip,  not  wishing  to  disturb,  but  at  the  same  time  anxious 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        337 

to  indicate  his  presence.  He  brought  me  a  crimson  egg.  Then 
came  the  doorkeeper  and  the  cook.  The  policeman  must, 
I  think,  have  been  pleased  with  lus  tip,  because  policemen  kept 
on  coming  all  the  morning,  and  there  were  not  more  than  two 
who  belonged  to  my  street. 

In  the  afternoon  I  went  to  a  hospital  for  wounded  soldiers 
to  see  them  keep  Easter,  which  they  did  by  playing  blind  man's 
buff  to  the  sound  of  a  flute  played  by  one  poor  man  who  was 
crippled  for  life.  One  of  the  soldiers  gave  me  as  an  Easter  gift 
a  poem,  a  curious  human  document.  It  is  in  two  parts  callt-d 
"  Past  and  Present."     This  one  is  "  Present  "  : 

"  PRESENT " 

"  I  lived  the  quarter  of  a  century 
Without  knowing  happy  days  ; 
My  life  went  quickly  as  a  cart 
Drawn  by  swift  horses. 
1   never  knew  the  tenderness  of  parents 
Wnich  God  gives  to  all  ; 
For  fifteen  years  1  lived  in  a  shop 
Busied  in  heaping  up  riches  for  a  rich  man. 
I  was  in  my  twentieth  year 
When  I  was  taken  as  a  recruit  ; 
I  thought  that  the  end  had  come 
To  my  sorrowful  sufferings. 
Hut  no  !    and  here  misfortune  awaited  me  ; 
I  was  destined  to  serve  in  that  country. 
Where  I  had  to  fight  like  a  lion  with  the  foe, 
For  the  honour  of  Russia,  for  my  dear  country. 
1   shall  for  a  long  time  not  forget 
That  hour,  and  that  date  of  the   17th,1 
In  which  by  the  river  Liao-he 
I  remained  for  ever  without  my  legs. 
Now  I  live  contented  with  all, 
Where  good  food  and  drink  are  given, 
But  I  would  rather  be  a  free  bird 
And  see  the  dear  home  where  I  was  born." 

This  is  the  sequel  : 

"  PAST" 

"  I  will  tell  you,   brothers, 
How    1   spent  my  youth  ; 
I  heaped  up  silver, 
1   did  not  know  the  sight  of  copper  ; 

1  1  7th  August,  battle  of  Liaoyang. 
22 


33^  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

I  was  merry,  young,  and  nice  ; 

I  loved  lovely  maidens  ; 

I  lived  in  clover,  lived  in  freedom 

Like  a  young  '  barin.' 

I  slept  on  straw, 

Just  like  a  little  pig. 

I  had  a  very  big  house 

Where  I  could  rest. 

It.  was  a  mouldy  barn, 

There  where  the  women  beat  the  flax. 

Every  day  I  bathed 

In  spring  water  ; 

I  used  for  a  towel 

My  scanty  leg-cloth. 

In  the  beer-shops,  too, 

I  used  to  like  to  go, 

To  show  how  proudly 

I  knew  how  to  drink  '  vodka.' 

Now  at  the  age  of  twenty-six 

This  liberty  no  longer  is  for  me. 

I  remember  my  mouldy  roof, 

And  I  shed  a  bitter  tear. 

When  I  lived  at  home  I  was  contented 

I  experienced  no  bitterness  in  service. 

I  have  learnt  to  know  something, 

Fate  has  brought  me  to  Moscow  ; 

I  live  in  a  house  in  fright  and  grief, 

Every  day  and  every  hour ; 

And  when  I  think  of  liberty, 

I  cannot  see  for  tears. 

That  is  how  I  lived  from  my  youth  ; 

That  is  what  freedom  means. 

I  drank  '  vodka  '  in  freedom, 

Afterwards  I  have  only  to  weep. 

Such  am  I,  young  Vaniousia, 

This  fellow  whom  you  now  see 

Was  once  a  splendid  merry-maker, 

Named   Romodin." 

These  two  poems,  seemingly  so  contradictory,  were  the 
sincere  expression  of  the  situation  of  the  man,  who  was  a 
cripple  in  the  hospital.  He  gave  both  sides  of  each  situation — 
that  of  freedom  and  that  of  living  in  a  hospital. 

On  Saturday  afternoon  I  went  to  one  of  the  permanent 
fairs  or  markets  in  the  town,  where  there  were  many  booths. 
Everything  was  sold  here,  and  here  the  people  bought  their 
clothes.  They  were  then  buying  their  summer  yachting  caps. 
One  man  offered   me  a  stolen   gold  watch   for  a  small  sum. 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION         339 

Another  begged  me  to  buy  him  a  pair  of  cheap  boots.  I  did 
so  ;  upon  which  he  said  :  "  New  thai  you  have  made  half  a 
man  of  me,  make  a  whole  man  of  me  by  buying  me  a  jacket." 
I  refused,  however,  to  make  a  whole  man  of  him. 

On  Easter  Monday  I  went  out  to  luncheon  with  some  friends 
in  the  Intelligentsia.  We  were  a  large  party,  and  one  of 
the  guests  was  an  1  fficer  who  had  been  to  the  war.  Towards 
the  end  of  luncheon,  when  everybody  was  convivial,  healths 
were  drunk,  and  one  young  man,  who  proclaimed  loudly 
that  he  was  a  Social  Revolutionary,  drank  to  the  health  of 
the  Republic.  I  made  great  friends  with  the  Social  Revolu- 
tionary during  luncheon.  When  this  health  was  drunk,  I 
was  alarmed  as  to  what  the  officer  might  do.  But  the  officer 
turned  out  to  be  this  man's  brother.  The  officer  himself  made 
a  speech  which  was,  I  think,  the  most  brilliant  example  of 
compromise  I  have  ever  heard  ;  for  he  expressed  his  full 
sympathy  with  the  Liberal  movement  in  Russia,  including  its 
representatives  in  the  extreme  parties,  and  at  the  same  time 
his  unalterable  loyalty  to  his  Sovereign. 

After  luncheon,  the  Social  Revolutionary,  who  had  sworn 
me  eternal  friendship,  was  told  that  I  had  relations  in  London 
who  managed  a  bank.  So  he  came  up  to  me  and  said  :  "  If 
you  give  our  Government  one  penny  in  the  way  of  a  loan  I  shall 
shoot  you  dead." 

After  that  we  danced  for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon.  The 
Social  Revolutionary  every  now  and  then  inveighed  against 
loans  and  expressed  his  hope  that  the  Government  would  be 
bankrupt. 

In  May  I  went  to  St.  Petersburg  for  the  opening  of  the  Duma, 
and  I  stayed  there  till  the  Duma  was  dissolved  in  July. 

The  brief  life  of  the  first  Duma  was  an  extraordinarily 
interesting  spectacle  to  watch.  The  Duma  met  in  the  beautiful 
Taurid  palace  that  Catherine  the  Second  built  for  Poteinkin.  In 
the  lobby,  which  was  a  large  Louis  XV.  ballroom,  members  and 
visitors  used  to  flock  in  crowds,  smoke  cigarettes,  and  throw 
away  the  ashes  and  the  ends  on  to  the  parquet  floor.  There 
were  peasant  members  in  their  long  black  coats,  some  of  them 
wearing  crosses  and  medals  ;  Popes,  Tartars,  Poles,  men  in 
every  kind  of  dress  except  uniform. 

There  was  an  air  of  intimacy,  ease,  and  familiarity  about 
the  whole  proceedings.     The  speeches  were  eloquent,  but  no 


340  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

signs  of  political  experience  or  statesmanlike  action  were  to  be 
discerned. 

I  got  to  know  a  great  many  of  the  members  :  Aladin,  who 
was  looked  upon  as  a  violent  firebrand,  and  the  star  of  the  Left ; 
Milioukov,  the  leader  of  the  Kadets,  who  was  well  known  as  a 
journalist  and  a  professor  ;  Kovolievsky,  also  a  well-known 
writer  and  professor,  a  large,  genial,  comfortable  man  with  an 
embracing  manner  and  a  great  warmth  of  welcome,  and  a  rich, 
flowing  vocabulary. 

The  peasants  liked  him  and  he  was  the  only  politician 
whom  they  trusted.  They  sent  him  a  deputation  to  inform  him 
that  whenever  he  stood  up  to  vote  they  intended  to  stand  up 
in  a  body,  and  whenever  he  remained  seated  they  would  remain 
seated  too.     I  also  knew  many  peasant  members. 

The  proceedings  of  the  Duma  resulted  in  a  deadlock  between 
it  and  the  Government  from  the  very  first  moment  it  met. 
It  soon  became  obvious  that  the  Government  must  either 
dissolve  the  Duma  or  form  a  Ministry  taken  from  the  Duma, 
that  is  to  say,  from  the  opposition.  The  question  was,  if  they 
did  not  wish  to  do  that,  would  the  country  stand  a  dissolution 
or  would  there  be  a  revolution  ?  The  crucial  question  of  the 
hour  was,  should  the  Government  appoint  a  Kadet  Ministry, 
consisting  of  Liberals  belonging  to  the  Constitutional  Demo- 
cratic party  who  formed  the  great  majority  of  the  Duma,  or 
should  they  dissolve  the  Duma  ?  There  was  no  third  course 
possible.  I  thought  at  the  time  that  events  would  move  more 
quickly  than  they  did.  I  thought  if  the  Duma  were  dissolved, 
not  only  disorder  but  immediate,  open,  and  universal  revolution 
would  follow. 

The  army  was  shaky.  Non-commissioned  officers  of  the 
Guards  regiments  were  in  touch  with  the  Labour  members  of 
the  Duma,  and  their  conversations,  at  which  I  sometimes 
assisted,  were  not  reassuring.  My  impression  from  these  con- 
versations and  from  all  the  talks  I  had  with  the  peasants  and 
Labour  members  was  that  revolution,  if  and  when  it  did  come, 
would  be  a  terrible  thing,  and  I  thought  it  might  quite  likely 
come  at  once.  Mutinies  had  occurred  in  more  than  sixty  regi- 
ments ;  a  regiment  of  Guards,  the  Emperor's  own  regiment, 
had  revolted  in  St.  Petersburg.  I  thought  the  dissolution 
would  be  the  signal  for  an  immediate  outbreak  of  some  kind. 
I  knew  nothing  decisive  could  happen  till  the  army  turned.      I 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        341 

thought  the  army  might  turn,  or  turn  sufficiently  to  give  the 
Liberal  leaders  the  upper  hand.     I  was  mistaken. 

At  the  end  of  July  1906  the  Government  was  vacillating  ; 
they  were  on  the  verge  of  capitulation,  and  within  an  ace  of 
forming  a  Kadet  Ministry.  I  think  they  were  only  prevented 
from  doing  so  by  the  appearance  on  the  scene  of  P.  A.  Stolypin. 
As  soon  as  Stolypin  made  his  first  speech  in  the  Duma,  two 
things  were  clear  :  he  was  not  afraid  of  opposition  ;  he  was 
determined  not  to  give  in.  He  was  going  to  fight  the  Duma  ; 
and  if  necessary  he  would  not  shrink  from  dissolving  it,  and  rak- 
ing the  consequences.  At  the  end  of  July,  Stolypin  strongly 
urged  dissolution.  He  argued  that  if  the  Kadets  came  into 
power  they  would  not  remain  in  office  a  week,  but  would  be  at 
the  mercy  of  the  Extremists,  and  at  once  replaced  by  the 
Extreme  Left,  and  swept  away  by  an  inrush  of  unripe  and  in- 
experienced Social  Democrats  who  hated  the  Liberals  more 
bitterly  than  they  hated  the  Government.  There  would  then, 
he  thought,  be  no  possibility  of  building  a  dam  or  barrier  against 
the  tide  of  revolution,  and  the  country  would  be  plunged  in 
anarchy.  Judging  from  what  occurred  in  1917,  Stolypin's  fore- 
cast was  correct.  For  this  is  precisely  what  happened  then. 
The  Liberals  were  at  once  turned  out  of  office,  and  replaced 
first  by  Kerensky  and  then  by  Lenin.  The  pendulum  swung 
as  far  to  the  left  as  it  could  go,  and  this  is  just  what  Stolypin 
anticipated  and  feared  in  1906. 

But  many  people  in  responsible  positions  (including  General 
Trepov)  were  advocating  the  formation  of  a  Kadet  Ministry  ; 
and  had  the  Kadets  had  any  leaders  of  character,  experience, 
and  strength  of  purpose,  the  counsel  would  perhaps  have  been 
a  sound  one. 

At  the  time  I  thought  the  only  means  of  avoiding  a  civil 
war  would  be  to  create  and  support  a  strong  Liberal  Ministry. 
The  objection  to  thi>  was,  there  was  no  such  thing  available. 
What  happened  was  that  Stolypin's  advice  was  listened  to. 
The  Duma  was  dissolved  and  no  revolution  followed.  The 
army  did  not  turn  ;  the  moderate  Liberals  capitulated  without 
a  fight.  They  took  the  dissolution  lying  down  ;  all  they  did 
was  to  go  to  Finland  and  sign  a  protest,  which  had  no  effect 
on  the  situation.  It  merely  gave  the  Government  a  pretext  for 
disenfranchising  certain  of  their  leading  members. 

It  may  seem  strange  that  the  Duma,  which  was  composed 


342  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

of  the  flower  of  intellectual  Russia,  and  certainly  had  a  large 
section  of  public  opinion  behind  it,  as  well  as  prestige  at  home 
and  abroad,  should  have  capitulated  so  tamely. 

The  truth  was  that  neither  in  the  ranks  of  the  moderate 
Liberals,  nor  in  those  of  the  Extremists,  although  they  were 
in  some  cases  men  of  exceptional  talents,  was  there  one  man 
sufficiently  strong  to  be  a  leader.  The  man  of  strong  character 
was  on  the  other  side.  He  was  Stolypin  ;  and  no  one  on  the 
side  of  the  Liberals  was  a  match  for  him.  The  Liberals  were 
journalists,  men  of  letters,  professors,  and  able  lawyers,  but 
there  was  not  one  man  of  action  in  their  ranks. 

As  soon  as  the  Duma  was  dissolved  and  no  open  revolution 
came  about,  I  did  not  think  there  would  be  another  act  in  the 
revolutionary  drama  for  another  ten  years.  I  put  this  on  public 
record  at  the  time,  and  as  it  turned  out,  I  was  only  a  year  out, 
as  the  revolution  took  place  eleven  years  after  the  dissolution 
of  the  first  Duma. 

All  through  those  summer  months  I  saw  many  interesting 
sights,  and  made  many  interesting  acquaintances. 

One  Sunday  I  spent  the  afternoon  at  Peterhof,  a  suburb  of 
St.  Petersburg,  where  the  Emperor  used  to  live.  There  in  the 
park,  amidst  the  trees,  the  plashing  waterfalls,  and  the  tall 
fountains,  "  les  grands  jets  d'eau  sveltes  parmi  les  marbres," 
the  lilac  bushes,  and  the  song  of  many  nightingales,  the  middle 
classes  were  enjoying  their  Sunday  afternoon  and  the  music 
of  a  band.  Suddenly,  in  this  beautiful  and  not  inappropriate 
setting,  the  Empress  of  Russia  passed  in  an  open  carriage, 
without  any  escort,  looking  as  beautiful  as  a  flower.  I  could 
not  help  thinking  of  Marie  Antoinette  at  the  Trianon,  and  I 
wondered  whether  ten  thousand  swords  would  leap  from 
their  scabbards  on  her  behalf. 

The  most  interesting  of  my  acquaintances  in  the  Duma 
was  Nazarenko,  the  peasant  deputy  for  Karkoff.  Professor 
Kovolievsky  introduced  me  to  him.  Nazarenko  was  far  the 
most  remarkable  of  the  peasant  deputies.  He  was  a  tall, 
striking  figure,  with  black  hair,  a  pale  face,  with  prominent 
clearly  cut  features,  such  as  Velasquez  would  have  taken  to 
paint  a  militant  apostle.  He  had  been  through  a  course  of 
primary  education,  and  by  subsequently  educating  himself 
he  had  assimilated  a  certain  amount  of  culture.  Besides  this, 
he  was  an  eloquent  speaker,  and  a  most  original  character. 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  Till.  REVOLUTION        343 

"  I  want  to  go  to  London,"  he  said,  "  so  that  the  English 
may  see  a  real  peasant  and  not  a  sham  one,  and  so  that  I  can 
tell  the  English  what  we,  the  real  people,  think  and  feel  about 
them."  I  said  I  was  glad  he  was  going.  '  I  shan't  go  unless 
I  am  chosen  by  the  others,"  he  answered.  '  I  have  written 
my  name  down  and  asked,  but  I  shan't  ask  twi<  <  .  I  never  ask 
twice  for  anything.  When  I  say  my  prayers  I  only  ask  God 
once  for  a  thing  ;  and  if  it  is  not  granted,  I  never  ask  again. 
And  so  it's  not  likely  I  would  ask  my  fellow-men  twice  for  any- 
thing. I  am  like  that  ;  I  leave  out  that  passage  in  the  prayers 
about  being  a  miserable  slave.  I  am  not  a  miserable  slave, 
neither  of  man  nor  of  Heaven."  "  That  is  what  the  Church 
calls  spiritual  pride,"  I  answered.  "  I  don't  believe  in  all  that," 
he  answered.  '  My  religion  is  the  same  as  that  of  Tolstoy." 
He  then  pointed  to  the  ikon  which  is  in  the  lobby  of  the  Duma. 
"  I  pay  no  attention  to  that,"  he  said.  "  It  is  a  board  covered 
witli  gilt  ;  but  a  lot  of  people  think  that  the  ikon  is  God." 

I  asked  him  if  he  liked  Tolstoy's  books.  "  Yes,"  he  an- 
swered. "  His  books  are  great,  but  his  philosophy  is  weak. 
It  may  be  all  right  for  mankind  thousands  of  years  hence,  but 
it  is  of  no  use  now.  I  have  no  friends,"  he  continued.  '  Books 
are  my  friends.  But  lately  my  house  was  burnt,  and  all  my 
books  with  it.  I  have  read  a  lot,  but  I  never  had  anybody  to 
tell  me  what  to  read,  so  I  read  without  any  system.  I  did  not 
go  to  school  till  I  was  thirteen." 

'  Do  you  like  Dostoievsky's  books  ?  "  "  Yes  ;  he  knows 
all  about  the  human  soul.  When  I  see  a  man  going  downhill, 
I  know  exactly  how  it  will  happen,  and  what  he  is  going  through, 
and  I  could  stop  him  because  I  have  read  Dostoievsky."  "  Have 
you  read  translations  of  any  foreign  books  ?  "  "  Very  few  ; 
some  of  Zola's  books,  but  I  don't  like  them,  because  he  does  not 
really  know  the  life  he  is  describing.  Some  of  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant's stories  I  have  read,  but  I  do  not  like  them  either 
because  I  don't  want  to  know  more  about  that  kind  of  people 
than  I  know  already."  'Have  you  read  Shakespeare?' 
'  Yes.  There  is  nobody  like  him.  When  you  read  a  conversa- 
tion of  Shakespeare's,  when  one  person  is  speaking  you  think 
he  is  right,  and  when  the  next  person  answers  him  you  think 
he  is  right.  He  understands  everybody.  But  I  want  to  read 
Spencer — Herbert  Spencer.  I  have  never  been  able  to  get  his 
works."     I  promised  to  procure  him  Herbert  Spenci  is  works. 


344  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

One  evening  I  went  to  see  Nazarenko  in  his  house.  He  was 
not  at  home,  but  a  friend  of  his  was  there.  He  told  me  to  wait. 
He  was  a  peasant  ;  thirty-nine  years  old,  rather  bald,  with  a  nice 
intelligent  face.  At  first  he  took  no  notice  of  me,  and  read 
aloud  to  himself  out  of  a  book.  Then  he  suddenly  turned  to  me 
and  asked  me  who  I  was.  I  said  I  was  an  English  correspondent. 
He  got  up,  shut  the  door,  and  begged  me  to  stay.  "  Do  the 
English  know  the  condition  of  the  Russian  peasantry  ?  "  he 
asked.  '  They  think  we  are  wolves  and  bears.  Do  I  look  like 
a  wolf  ?  Please  say  I  am  not  a  wolf."  Then  he  ordered  some 
tea,  and  got  a  bottle  of  beer.  He  asked  me  to  tell  him  how 
labourers  lived  in  England,  what  their  houses  were  made 
of,  what  wages  a  labourer  received,  what  was  the  price  of 
meat,  whether  they  ate  meat  ?  Then  he  suddenly,  to  my 
intense  astonishment,  put  the  following  question  to  me  :  "  In 
England  do  they  think  that  Jesus  Christ  was  a  God  or  only 
a  great  man  ?  "  I  asked  him  what  he  thought.  He  said  he 
thought  He  was  a  great  man.  He  said  that  the  Russian 
people  were  religious  and  superstitious  ;  they  were  deceived  by 
the  priests,  who  threatened  them  with  damnation.  He  asked 
me  if  I  could  lend  him  an  English  Bible.  He  wanted  to  see 
if  it  was  the  same  as  a  Russian  Bible.  I  said  it  was  exactly 
the  same.  He  was  immensely  astonished.  "  Do  you  mean  to 
say,"  he  asked,  "  that  there  are  all  those  stories  about  Jonah 
and  the  whale,  and  Joshua  and  the  moon  ?  "  I  said  "  Yes." 
'  I  thought,"  he  said,  "  those  had  been  put  in  for  us."  I  tried 
to  explain  to  him  that  Englishmen  were  taught  almost  exactly 
the  same  thing,  and  that  the  Anglican  and  the  Orthodox  Church 
used  the  same  Bible.  We  then  talked  of  ghosts.  He  asked 
me  if  I  believed  in  ghosts.  I  said  I  did.  He  asked  why.  I 
gave  various  reasons.  He  said  he  could  believe  in  a  kind  of 
telepathy,  a  kind  of  moral  wireless  telegraphy  ;  but  ghosts  were 
the  invention  of  old  women.  He  suddenly  asked  me  whether 
the  earth  was  four  thousand  years  old.  "  Of  course  it's  older," 
he  said.  "  But  that's  what  we  are  taught.  We  are  taught 
nothing  about  geography  and  geology.  It  is,  of  course,  a  fact 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  God,"  he  said  ;  "  because,  if  there 
is  a  God,  He  must  be  a  just  God  ;  and  as  there  is  so  much  in- 
justice in  the  world,  it  is  plain  that  a  just  God  does  not  exist. 
But  you,"  he  went  on,  "  an  Englishman  who  has  never  been 
deceived  by  officials,  do  you  believe  that  God  exists  ?  "     (He 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION       345 

thought  that  all  ideas  of  religion  and  God  as  taught  to  the 
Russian  people  were  part  of  a  great  official  lie.)  '  I  do,"  I 
said.  "  Why  ?  "  he  asked.  I  asked  him  if  he  had  read  the 
Book  of  Job.  He  said  he  had.  I  said  that  when  Job  has 
everything  taken  away  from  him,  although  he  has  done  no 
wrong,  suddenly,  in  the  last  depth  of  bis  misery,  he  recognises 
the  existence  of  God  in  the  immensity  of  nature,  and  feels  that 
his  own  soul  is  a  pail  of  B  plan  too  vast  for  him  to  conceive 
or  to  comprehend.  In  feeling  that  he  is  part  of  the  scheme,  he 
acknowledges  the  existence  of  God,  and  that  is  enough  ;  he 
is  able  to  consent,  and  to  console  himself,  although  in  dust 
and  ashes.  That  was,  I  said,  what  I  thought  one  could  feel. 
He  admitted  the  point  of  view,  but  he  did  not  share  it.  After 
we  had  had  tea  we  went  for  a  walk  in  some  gardens  not  far  off, 
where  there  were  various  theatrical  performances  going  on. 
The  audience  amused  me,  it  applauded  so  rapturously  and  in- 
sisted on  an  encore,  whatever  was  played,  and  however  it  was 
played,  with  such  thunderous  insistence.  "  Priests,"  said  my 
friend,  '  base  everything  on  the  devil.  There  is  no  devil. 
There  was  no  fall  of  man.  There  are  no  ghosts,  no  spirits,  but 
there  are  milln  ins  and  millions  of  other  inhabited  worlds." 

I  left  him  late,  when  the  performance  was  over.  This 
man,  who  was  a  member  of  the  Duma  for  the  government  of 
Tula,  was  called  Petrukin.  I  looked  up  his  name  in  the  list 
of  members,  and  found  he  had  been  educated  in  the  local  church 
school  of  the  village  of  Kologrivo  ;  that  he  had  spent  the  whole 
of  his  life  in  this  village,  and  had  been  engaged  in  agriculture  ; 
that  among  the  peasants  he  enjoyed  great  popularity  as  being 
a  clever  and  hard-working  man.  He  belonged  to  no  party. 
He  was  not  in  the  least  like  the  men  of  peasant  origin  who  had 
assimilated  European  culture.  He  was  naturally  sensible  and 
alert  of  mind. 

One  Sunday  I  went  by  train  to  a  place  called  Terrioki,  in 
Finland,  where  a  meeting  was  to  be  held  by  the  Labour  Party 
of  the  Duma.  The  train  was  crowded  with  people  who  looked 
more  like  holiday-makers  than  political  supporters  of  the 
Extreme  Left — so  crowded  that  one  had  to  stand  up  on  the 
platform  outside  the  carriage  throughout  the  journey.  After 
a  journey  of  an  hour  and  a  quarter  we  arrived  at  Terrioki. 
The  crowd  leapt  from  the  train  and  immediately  unfurled  red 
flags  and  sang  the  "  Marseillaise."     The  crowd  occupied  the 


346  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

second  line,  and  a  policeman  observed  that,  as  another  train 
was  coming  in  and  would  occupy  that  line,  it  would  be  advisable 
if  they  were  to  move  on.  "  What  ? — police  even  here  in  free 
Finland  ?  "  somebody  cried.  "  The  police  are  elected  here  by 
the  people,"  was  the  pacifying  reply  ;  and  the  crowd  moved 
on,  formed  into  a  procession  six  abreast,  and  started  marching 
to  the  gardens  where  the  meeting  was  to  be  held,  singing  the 
"  Marseillaise  "  and  other  songs  all  the  way.  The  dust  was  so 
thick  that,  after  marching  with  the  procession  for  some  time, 
I  took  a  cab  and  told  the  driver  to  take  me  to  the  meeting. 
We  drove  off  at  a  brisk  speed  past  innumerable  wooden  houses, 
villas,  shops  (where  Finnish  knives  and  English  tobacco  were 
sold),  into  a  wood.  After  we  had  driven  for  twenty  minutes  I 
asked  the  driver  if  we  still  had  far  to  go.  He  turned  round  and, 
smiling,  said  in  pidgin-Russian  (he  was  a  Finn)  :  "  Me  not  know 
where  you  want  to  go."  Then  we  turned  back,  and,  after  a 
long  search  and  much  questioning  of  passers-by,  found  the 
garden,  into  which  one  was  admitted  by  ticket.  (Here,  again, 
anyone  could  get  in.)  In  a  large  grassy  and  green  garden, 
shady  with  many  trees,  a  kind  of  wooden  semicircular  proscenium 
had  been  erected,  and  in  one  part  of  it  was  a  low  platform  not 
more  spacious  than  a  table.  On  the  proscenium  the  red 
flags  were  hung.  In  front  of  the  table  there  were  a  few 
benches,  but  the  greater  part  of  the  public  stood.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  villas  were  here  in  large  numbers  ;  there 
were  not  many  workmen,  but  a  number  of  students  and 
various  other  members  of  the  Intelligentsia — young  men  with 
undisciplined  hair  and  young  ladies  in  large  art  nouveau  hats 
and  Reformkleider.  M.  Zhilkin,  the  leader  of  the  Labour  Party 
in  the  Duma,  took  the  chair. 

The  meeting  was  opened  by  a  man  who  laid  stress  on  the 
necessity  of  a  Constituent  Assembly.  Speeches  succeeded  one 
another.  Students  climbed  up  into  the  pine  trees  and  on 
the  roof  of  the  proscenium.  Others  lay  on  the  grass  behind 
the  crowd.  "  Land  and  Liberty  "  was  the  burden  of  the 
speeches.  There  was  nothing  new  or  striking  said.  The 
hackneyed  commonplaces  were  rolled  out  one  after  another. 
Indignation,  threats,  menaces,  blood  and  thunder.  And  all 
the  time  the  sun  shone  hotter  and  "  all  Nature  looked  smiling 
and  gay."  The  audience  applauded,  but  no  fierceness  of 
invective,  no  torrent  of  rhetoric,  managed  to  make  the  meeting 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION         347 

a  serious  one.  Nature  is  stronger  than  speeches,  and  sunshine 
more  potent  than  rant.  It  is  true  the  audience  were  enjoying 
themselves  ;  but  they  were  enjoying  the  outing,  and  the  speeches 
were  an  agreeable  incidental  accompaniment.  They  enjoyed 
the  attacks  on  the  powers  that  be,  as  the  Bank-holiday  maker 
enjoys  Aunt  Sally  at  the  seaside.  Some  Finn-  spoke  in  Russian 
and  Finnish,  and  then  Aladin  made  a  speech.  As  he  rose  he 
met  with  an  ovation.  Aladin  was  of  peasant  extraction.  He 
had  been  to  the  University  in  Russia,  emigrated  to  London, 
had  been  a  dork  labourer,  a  printer's  devil,  a  journalist, 
an  electrical  engineer,  a  teacher  of  Russian  ;  he  spoke  French 
and  German  perfectly,  and  English  so  well  that  he  spoke  Rn— ian 
with  a  London  accent.  Aladin  had  a  great  contempt  for  the 
methods  of  the  Russian  revolutionaries.  He  said  that  only  people 
without  any  stuff  in  them  would  demand  a  Constituent  Assembly. 
"  You  don't  demand  a  Constituent  Assembly  ;  you  constitute 
it,"  he  said.  "The  Russian  people  would  never  be  free  until 
they  showed  by  their  acts  that  they  meant  to  be  free."  Aladin 
spoke  without  any  gesticulation.  He  was  a  dark,  shortish  man, 
with  a  small  moustache  and  grey,  serious  eyes,  short  hair,  and 
had  a  great  command  of  mordant  language.  His  oratory  on 
this  occasion  was  particularly  nervous  and  pithy.  But  he 
did  not  succeed  in  turning  that  audience  of  holiday-makers 
into  a  revolutionary  meeting.  The  inhabitants  of  the  villas 
clapped.  The  young  ladies  in  large  hats  chortled  with  delight. 
It  was  a  glorious  picnic — an  ecstatic  game  of  Aunt  Sally.  And 
when  the  interval  came,  the  public  rushed  to  the  restaurants. 
There  was  one  on  the  seashore,  with  a  military  band  playing. 
There  was  a  beach  and  a  pier,  and  boats  and  bathers.  Here 
was  the  true  inwardness  of  the  meeting.  Many  people  remained 
on  the  beach  for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon. 

As  soon  as  the  Duma  was  dissolved  I  went  to  Moscow  and 
stayed  a  few  days  at  Marie  Karlovna's  datcha  at  Tsaritsina, 
near  Moscow. 

Near  the  house  where  I  was  living  there  was  a  village  ;  as 
this  village  was  close  to  the  town  of  Moscow,  I  thought  that  its 
inhabitants  would  be  suburban.     This  was  not  so.     The  near- 

3  to  Moscow  seemed  to  make  no  difference  at  all.  I  was 
walking  through  the  village  one  morning,  when  a  peasant  who 
was  sitting  on  his  doorstep  called  me  and  asked  me  if  I  would 
like  to  eat  an  apple.     I  accepted  his  invitation.     He  said  he 


348  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

presumed  I  was  living  with  Marie  Karlovna,  as  other  English- 
men had  lived  there  before.  Then  he  asked  abruptly  :  "  Is 
Marie  Alexandrovna  in  your  place  ?  "  I  said  my  hostess's 
name  was  Marie  Karlovna.  "  Of  course,"  he  said,  "  I  don't 
mean  here,  but  in  your  place,  in  your  country."  I  didn't 
understand.  Then  he  said  it  again  louder,  and  asked  if  I 
was  deaf.  I  said  I  wasn't  deaf,  and  that  I  understood  what 
he  said,  but  I  did  not  know  whom  he  was  alluding  to.  "  Talk- 
ing to  you,"  he  said,  "  is  like  talking  to  a  Tartar.  You  look  at 
one  and  don't  understand  what  one  says."  Then  it  suddenly 
flashed  on  me  that  he  was  alluding  to  the  Duchess  of  Edinburgh.1 
"  You  mean  the  relation  of  our  Queen  Alexandra  ?  "  I  said. 
"  That's  what  I  mean,"  he  answered.  "  Your  Queen  is  the 
sister  of  the  Empress  Marie  Feodorovna."  It  afterwards 
appeared  that  he  thought  that  England  had  been  semi- 
Russianised  owing  to  this  relationship. 

Two  more  peasants  joined  us,  and  one  of  them  brought  a 
small  bottle  (the  size  of  a  sample)  of  vodka  and  a  plate  of 
cherries.  "  We  will  go  and  drink  this  in  the  orchard,"  they 
said.  So  we  went  to  the  orchard.  "  You  have  come  here  to 
learn,"  said  the  first  peasant,  a  bearded  man,  whose  name  was 
Feodor.  "  Many  Englishmen  have  been  here  to  learn.  I 
taught  one  all  the  words  that  we  use."  I  said  I  was  a  corre- 
spondent ;  that  I  had  just  arrived  from  St.  Petersburg,  where 
I  had  attended  the  sittings  of  the  Duma.  "  What  about  the 
Duma  ?  "  asked  the  other  peasant.  "  They've  sent  it  away. 
Will  there  be  another  one  ?  "  I  said  a  manifesto  spoke  of  a 
new  one.  "  Yes,"  said  Feodor,  "  there  is  a  manifesto  abolish- 
ing punishments."  I  said  I  hadn't  observed  that  clause 
'  Will  they  give  us  back  our  land  ?  "  asked  Feodor.  "  All 
the  land  here  belongs  to  us  really."  Then  followed  a  long 
explanation  as  to  why  the  land  belonged  to  them.  It  was 
Crown  property.  I  said  I  did  not  know.  "  If  they  don't 
give  it  back  to  us  we  shall  take  it,"  he  said  simply.  Then 
one  of  the  other  peasants  added  :  "  Those  manifestos  are  not 
written  by  the  Emperor,  but  by  the  '  authorities.'  "  (The 
same  thing  was  said  to  me  by  a  cabman  at  St.  Petersburg, 
his  reason  being  that  the  Emperor  would  say  "  I,"  whereas 
the  manifesto  said  "  We.")     Then  they  asked  me  why  they 

1  A  palace  and  a  park  in  the  neighbourhood  belonged  to  the  Duchess 
of  Edinburgh,  whose  name  was  Marie  Alexandrovna. 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION       349 

had  not  won  the  war,  and  whether  it  was  true  that  the  war 
had  been  badly  managed.  "  We  know  nothing,"  he  said. 
"  What  newspaper  tells  the  truth  ?  Where  can  we  find  the 
real  truth  ?  Is  it  to  be  found  in  the  Russkoe  Slovo  ?  "  (a  big 
Moscow  newspaper).  They  asked  me  about  the  Baltic  Fled 
and  why  Admiral  Nebogatov  had  made  a  signal  which  meant 
"  Beat  us." 

I  went  away,  and  as  I  was  going  Feodor  asked  me  if  I 
would  like  to  go  and  see  the  haymaking  the  next  day.  If  so, 
I  had  better  be  at  his  house  at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 
The  next  day,  Sunday,  I  kept  my  appointment,  but  found 
nobody  at  home  in  the  house  of  Feodor  except  a  small  child. 
"  Is  Feodor  at  home  ?  "  I  asked.  A  man  appeared  from  a 
neighbouring  cottage  and  said  :  "  Feodor  is  in  the  inn,  drunk." 
"Is  he  going  to  the  haymaking?"  I  asked.  "Of  course, 
he's  going."  'Is  he  very  drunk?"  I  asked.  "No,  not 
very  ;  I  will  tell  him  you  are  here."  And  the  man  went  to 
fetch  him.  Then  a  third  person  arrived — a  young  peasant 
in  his  Sunday  clothes — and  asked  me  where  I  was  going.  I 
said  I  was  going  to  make  hay.  "  Do  you  know  how  to  ?  " 
he  asked.  I  said  I  didn't.  "  I  see,"  he  said,  "  you  are  just 
going  to  amuse  yourself.  I  advise  you  not  to  go.  They  will 
be  drunk,  and  there  might  be  unpleasantness." 

Presently  Feodor  arrived,  apparently  perfectly  sober  except 
that  he  was  rather  red  in  the  face.  He  harnessed  his  horse 
to  a  cart.  '  Would  I  mind  not  wearing  my  hat,  but  one  of 
his  ?  "  he  asked.  I  said  I  didn't  mind,  and  he  lent  me  a  dark 
blue  yachting  cap,  which  is  what  the  peasants  wear  all  over 
Russia.  My  shirt  was  all  right.  I  had  got  on  a  loose  Russian 
sliirt  without  a  collar.  He  explained  that  it  would  look  odd 
to  be  seen  with  someone  wearing  such  a  hat  as  I  had.  It 
was  a  felt  hat.  The  little  boy  who  was  running  about  the 
house  was  Feodor's  son.  He  was  barefooted,  and  one  of  his 
feet  was  bound  up.  I  asked  what  was  the  matter  with  it. 
The  bandage  was  at  once  taken  off,  and  I  was  shown  the 
remains  of  a  large  blister  and  gathering.  "  It's  been  cured 
now,"  Feodor  said.  '  It  was  a  huge  blister.  It  was  cured 
by  witchcraft.  I  took  him  to  the  Wise  Woman,  and  she  put 
something  on  it  ami  said  a  few  words,  and  the  pain  stopped, 
and  it  got  quite  well.  Doctors  are  no  good  ;  they  only  cut 
one  about.     I  was  kicked  by  a  horse  and  the  pain  was  terrible. 


350  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

I  drank  a  lot  of  vodka,  and  it  did  no  good  ;  then  I  went  to  the 
Wise  Woman  and  she  put  ointment  on  the  place  and  she 
spoke  away  the  pain.  We  think  it's  best  to  be  cured  like  this 
— village  fashion."  I  knew  this  practice  existed,  but  it  was 
curious  to  find  it  so  near  Moscow.  It  was  like  finding  witch- 
craft at  Surbiton. 

We  started  for  the  hay  meadows,  which  were  about  ten 
miles  distant.  On  the  road  we  met  other  peasants  in  carts 
bound  for  the  same  destination.  They  all  gravely  took  off 
their  hats  to  each  other.  After  an  hour  and  a  half's  drive 
we  arrived  at  the  Moscow  River,  on  the  bank  of  which  there 
is  a  tea-shop.  Tea-shops  exist  all  over  Russia.  The  feature 
of  them  is,  that  you  cannot  buy  spirits  there.  We  stopped 
and  had  tea.  Everybody  was  brought  a  small  teapot  for 
tea  and  a  huge  teapot  of  boiling  water,  and  some  small  cups, 
and  everybody  drank  about  four  or  five  cups  out  of  the  saucer. 
They  eat  the  sugar  separately,  and  do  not  put  it  into  the  cup. 

We  crossed  the  river  on  a  floating  bridge,  and,  driving  past 
a  large  white  Byzantine  monastery,  arrived  at  the  green  hay 
meadows  on  the  farther  river-bank  towards  sunset.  The  hay- 
making began.  The  first  step  which  was  taken  was  for  vodka 
bottles  to  be  produced  and  for  everybody  to  drink  vodka 
out  of  a  cup.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  shouting  and  an 
immense  amount  of  abuse.  "  It  doesn't  mean  anything," 
Feodor  said.  "  We  curse  each  other  and  make  it  up  after- 
wards." They  then  drew  lots  for  the  particular  strip  they 
should  mow,  each  man  carrying  his  scythe  high  over  his 
shoulder.  ("  Don't  come  too  near,"  said  Feodor  ;  "  when 
men  have  '  drink  taken  '  they  are  careless  with  scythes.") 

When  the  lots  were  drawn  they  began  mowing.  It  was  a 
beautiful  sight  to  see  the  mowing  in  the  sunset  by  the  river  ; 
the  meadows  were  of  an  intense  soft  green  ;  the  sky  fleecy 
and  golden  to  the  west,  and  black  with  a  great  thundercloud 
over  the  woods  to  the  east,  lit  up  with  intermittent  summer 
lightning.  The  mowers  were  dressed  in  different  coloured  shirts 
— scarlet,  blue,  white,  and  green.  They  mowed  till  the  twilight 
fell  and  the  thundercloud  drew  near  to  us.  Then  Feodor 
came  and  made  our  cart  into  a  tent  by  tying  up  the  shafts, 
putting  a  piece  of  matting  across  them,  and  covering  it  with 
hay,  and  under  this  he  made  beds  of  hay.  We  had  supper. 
Feodor  said  his   prayers,  and   prepared  to  go  to  sleep,  but 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        351 

changed  his  mind,  got  up,  and  joined  some  friends  in  a  neigh- 
bouring cart. 

Three  children  and  a  deaf-and-dumb  peasant  remained 
with  me.  The  peasants  who  were  in  the  neighbouring  tent 
were  drunk.  They  began  by  quarrelling;  then  they  sang  for 
about  four  hours  without  stopping  ;  then  they  talked.  Feodoi 
came  back  about  half  an  hour  before  it  was  light,  and  slept 
for  that  brief  space.  I  did  not  sleep  at  all.  I  wasn't  tired, 
and  the  singing  was  delightful  to  hear  :  so  extremely  character- 
istic of  Russia  and  so  utterly  unlike  the  music  of  any  other 
country,  except  Mongolia.  The  children  chattered  for  some 
time  about  mushroom  gathering,  and  the  deaf-and-dumb  man 
told  me  a  lot  by  signs,  and  then  everybody  went  to  sleep. 

As  soon  as  it  was  light  the  mowers  all  got  up  and  began 
mowing.  I  do  not  know  which  was  the  more  beautiful  effect  — 
that  of  the  dusk  or  of  the  dawn.  The  dawn  was  grey  with 
pearly  clouds  and  suffused  with  the  faintest  pink  tinge,  and 
in  the  east  the  sun  rose  like  a  red  ball,  with  no  clouds  near  it. 
At  ten  o'clock  we  drove  to  an  inn  and  had  tea  ;  we  then  drove 
back,  and  the  hay,  although  it  was  quite  wet,  for  it  had 
rained  in  the  night,  was  carried  there  and  then.  "  The  women 
dry  it  at  home,"  Feodor  explained  ;  "it's  too  far  for  us  to 
come  here  twice."  The  carts  were  laden  with  hay,  and  I  drove 
one  of  them  home,  lying  on  the  top  of  the  hay,  in  my  sleep. 
I  had  always  envied  the  drivers  of  carts  whom  one  meets 
lying  on  a  high  load  of  hay,  fast  asleep,  and  now  I  know  from 
experience  that  there  is  no  such  delicious  slumber,  with  the 
kind  sun  warming  one  through  and  through  after  a  cold  night, 
and  the  slow  jolting  of  the  wagon  rocking  one,  and  the  smell 
of  the  hay  acting  like  a  soporific.  Every  now  and  then  I 
awoke  to  see  the  world  through  a  golden  haze,  and  then  one 
fell  back  and  drowsed  with  pleasure  in  a  deep  slumber  of  an 
inexpressibly  delicious  quality. 

When  we  recrossed  the  river  we  again  stopped  for  tea.  As 
we  were  standing  outside  an  old  woman  passed  us,  and  just 
as  she  passed,  one  of  the  peasants  said  to  me  :  "  Sit  down,  Barin." 
Barin  means  a  monsieur,  in  contradistinction  to  the  lower  class. 
"  Very  like  a  Barin,"  said  the  woman,  with  a  sarcastic  Miort, 
upon  which  the  peasant  told  her  in  the  plainest  and  most  un- 
complimentary speech  I  have  ever  heard  exactly  what  he  thought 
of  her  personal  appearance,  her  antecedents,  and  what  she  was 


352  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

fit  for.  She  passed  on  with  dignity  and  in  silence.  After 
a  time,  I  climbed  up  on  the  wagon  again,  and  sank  back  into 
my  green  paradise  of  dreams,  and  remembered  nothing  more 
till  we  arrived  home  at  five  o'clock  in  the  evening. 

A  few  days  later  I  travelled  from  Moscow  to  St.  Petersburg 
by  a  slow  train  in  a  third-class  carriage.  In  the  carriage  there 
was  a  mixed  and  representative  assembly  of  people  :  a  priest, 
a  merchant  from  Kursk,  a  photographer  from  Tchelabinsk,  a 
young  volunteer — that  is  to  say,  a  young  man  doing  his  year's 
military  service  previous  to  becoming  an  officer — two  minor 
public  servants,  an  ex-soldier  who  had  been  through  the  Turkish 
campaign,  a  soldier  who  had  lately  returned  from  Manchuria, 
three  peasants,  two  Tartars,  a  tradesman,  a  carpenter,  and 
some  others.  Besides  these,  a  band  of  gipsies  (with  their 
children)  encamped  themselves  on  the  platform  outside  the 
carriage,  and  penetrated  every  now  and  then  into  the  carriage 
until  they  were  driven  out  by  threats  and  curses. 

The  first  thing  everybody  did  was  to  make  themselves 
thoroughly  comfortable — to  arrange  mattresses  and  pillows 
for  the  night  ;  then  they  began  to  make  each  other's  acquaint- 
ance. We  had  not  travelled  far  before  the  gipsies  began  to 
sing  on  the  platform,  and  this  created  some  interest.  They 
suggested  fortune-telling,  but  the  ex-soldier  shouted  at  them 
in  a  gruff  voice  to  begone.  One  of  the  officials  had  his  fortune 
told.  The  gipsy  said  she  could  do  it  much  better  for  five  roubles 
(ten  shillings)  than  for  a  few  kopecks  which  he  had  given.  I 
had  my  fortune  told,  which  consisted  in  a  hurried  rigmarole 
to  the  effect  that  I  was  often  blamed,  but  never  blamed  others  ; 
that  I  could  only  work  if  I  was  my  own  master,  and  that  1 
would  shortly  experience  a  great  change  of  fortune.  The 
gipsy  added  that  if  I  could  give  her  five  roubles  she  would  tie 
a  piece  of  bark  in  my  handkerchief  which,  with  the  addition  of 
a  little  bread  and  salt,  would  render  me  immune  from  danger. 
The  gipsies  soon  got  out.     The  journey  went  on  uneventfully. 

"  Le  moine  disait  son  br6viaire, 
.  .  .  Une  femme  chantait," 

as  in  La  Fontaine's  fable.  We  had  supper  and  tea,  and  the 
ex-soldier  related  the  experiences  of  his  life,  saying  he  had 
travelled  much  and  seen  the  world  (he  was  a  Cossack  by  birth) 
and  was  not   merely  a    Muzhik.     This  offended  one  of  the 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION         353 

peasant*,  a  bearded  man,  who  walked  up  from  his  place  and 
grunted  in  protect,  and  then  walked  back  again. 

They  began  to  talk  politics.  The  Cossack  was  asked  his 
opinion  on  the  attitude  of  the  Cossacks.  He  said  their  attitude 
had  changed,  and  that  they  objected  to  police  service.  The 
photographer  from  Tchelabinsk  corroborated  this  statement, 
saying  he  had  been  present  at  a  Cossack  meeting  in  Siberia. 
Then  we  had  a  short  concert.  The  photographer  produced  a 
mandoline  and  played  tunes.  All  the  inmates  of  the  carriage 
gathered  round  him.  One  of  the  peasants  said:  "Although 
I  am  an  ignorant  man  "  (it  was  the  peasant  who  had  grunted) 
"  I  could  see  at  once  that  he  wasn't  simply  playing  with  his 
ringers,  but  with  something  else  "  (the  tortoiseshell  that  twangs 
the  mandoline).  Ho  asked  the  photographer  how  much  a 
mandoline  cost.  On  being  told  thirty  roubles  he  said  he  would 
give  thirty  roubles  to  be  able  to  play  as  well  as  that.  Somebody, 
by  way  of  appreciation,  put  a  cigarette  into  the  mouth  of  the 
photographer  as  he  was  playing. 

I  went  to  bed  in  the  next  compartment,  but  not  to  sleep, 
because  a  carpenter,  who  had  the  bed  opposite  mine,  told 
me  the  whole  melancholy  story  of  his  life.  The  volunteer 
appeared  later  ;  he  had  been  educated  in  the  Cadet  Corps, 
and  I  asked  him  if  he  would  soon  be  an  officer.  "  I  will  never 
be  an  officer,"  he  answered  ;  "  I  don't  want  to  be  one  now."  I 
asked  him  if  a  statement  I  had  read  in  the  newspapers  was  true, 
to  the  effect  that  several  officers  had  telegraphed  to  the  Govern- 
ment that  unless  they  were  relieved  of  police  duty  they  would 
resign.  He  said  it  was  quite  true  ;  that  discontent  pre- 
vailed among  officers  ;  that  the  life  was  becoming  unbearable  ; 
that  thej  w  re  looked  down  upon  by  the  rest  of  the  people  ; 
and  besides  this,  they  were  ordered  about  from  one  place  to 
another.  He  liked  the  officers  whom  he  was  with,  but  they 
were  sick  of  the  whole  thing.  Then,  towards  one  in  the 
morning,  I  got  a  little  sleep.  As  soon  as  it  was  daylight, 
everybody  was  up  making  tea  and  busily  discussing  politics. 
The  priest  and  the  tradesman  were  having  a  discussion  about 
the  Duma,  and  everyone  else,  including  the  guard,  was 
joining  in. 

"  Do  you  understand  what  the  Duma  was  ?  "  said  the 
tradesman  ;  "  the  Duma  was  simply  the  people.  Do  you  know 
What   all   that    talk  of  a   movement   of  liberation   means?      It 

23 


354  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

means  simply  this  :  that'  we  want  control,  responsibility. 
That  if  you  are  to  get  or  to  pay  five  roubles  or  fifty  roubles, 
you  will  get  or  pay  five  roubles  or  fifty  roubles,  not  more  and 
not  less,  and  that  nobody  will  have  the  right  to  interfere  ;  and 
that  if  someone  interferes  he  will  be  responsible.  The  first  thing 
the  Duma  asked  for  was  a  responsible  Ministry,  and  the  reason 
why  it  was  dissolved  is  that  the  Government  would  not  give 
that." 

The  priest  said  that  he  approved  of  a  Duma,  but  unless 
men  changed  themselves,  no  change  of  government  was  of  any 
use.     "  Man  must  change  inwardly,"  he  said. 

"  I  believe  in  God,"  answered  the  tradesman,  "  but  it  is 
written  in  the  Scripture  that  God  said  :  '  Take  the  earth  and 
cultivate  it,'  and  that  is  what  we  have  got  to  do — to  make  the 
best  of  this  earth.  When  we  die  we  shall  go  to  Heaven,  and 
then  " — he  spoke  in  a  practical  tone  of  voice  which  settled  the 
matter — "  then  we  shall  have  to  do  with  God."  The  priest  took 
out  his  Bible  and  found  a  passage  in  the  Gospel.  "  This  re- 
volutionary movement  will  go  on,"  he  said,  "  nothing  can  stop 
it  now  ;  but  mark  my  words,  we  shall  see  oceans  of  blood  shed 
first,  and  this  prophecy  will  come  true,"  and  he  read  the  text 
about  one  stone  not  being  left  on  another. 

They  then  discussed  the  priesthood  and  the  part  played  by 
priests.  "  The  priests  play  an  abominable  part,"  said  the 
tradesman  ;  "  they  are  worse  than  murderers.  A  murderer 
is  a  man  who  goes  and  kills  someone.  He  is  not  so  bad  as  the 
man  who  stays  at  home  and  tells  others  to  kill.  That  is  what 
the  priests  do."  He  mentioned  a  monk  who  had  preached 
against  the  Jews  in  the  south  of  Russia.  "  I  call  that  man  the 
greatest  criminal,  because  he  stirred  up  the  peasants'  blood, 
and  they  went  to  kill  the  Jews.  Lots  of  peasants  cease  to  go  to 
church  and  say  their  prayers  at  home  because  of  this.  When 
the  Cossacks  come  to  beat  them,  the  priests  tell  them  that  they 
are  sent  by  God.  Do  you  believe  they  are  sent  by  God  ?  ' 
he  asked,  turning  to  the  bearded  peasant. 

'  No,"  answered  the  peasant  ;  "  I  think  they  are  sent  by 
the  devil."  The  priest  said  that  the  universal  dominion  of  the 
Jews  was  at  hand.  The  tradesman  contested  this,  and  said 
that  in  Russia  the  Jews  were  assimilated  more  quickly  than 
in  other  countries.  "  The  Jews  are  cunning,"  said  the  priest  ; 
"  the  Russians  are  in  a  ditch,  and  they  go  to  the  Jews  and 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        355 

say  :   '  Pull  us  out.'  '  If  that  is  true,"  said  the  tradesman, 

"  we  ought  to  put  up  a  gold  statue  to  the  Jews  for  pulling 
us  out  of  the  ditch.  Look  at  the  time  of  the  pogroms;  the 
rich  Russians  ran  away,  but  the  richest  Jew  tayed  behind." 
"  They  are  clever  ;  they  knew  their  business.  If  they  stayed 
you  may  be  sure  they  gained  something  by  it,"  said  the  merchant 
from  Kursk.  '  But  we  ought  to  be  clever,  too,"  said  the 
tradesman,  "  and  try  and  imitate  their  self-sacrifice.  Look  at 
the  Duma.  There  were  twenty  Jews  in  the  Duma,  but  they 
did  not  bring  forward  the  question  of  equal  rights  for  the  Jews 
before  anything  else,  as  they  might  have  done.  It  is  criminal 
for  the  priests  to  attack  the  Jews,  and  if  they  go  on  like  this, 
the  people  will  leave  them." 

'  Whereas,"  s;iid  the  merchant  from  Kursk  thoughtfully, 
"if  they  helped  the  people,  the  people  would  never  desert 
them."  'The  priests,"  said  one  of  the  other  nondescript 
people,  "  say  that  Catherine  the  Second  is  a  goddess;  and  for 
that  reason  her  descendants  have  a  hundred  thousand  acres. 
Genera]  Trepov  will  be  canonised  when  he  dies,  and  his  bones 
will  work  miracles." 

The  guard  joined  in  here,  and  told  his  grievances  at  great 
length. 

At  one  of  the  stations  there  was  a  fresh  influx  of  people  ; 
among  ethers,  an  old  peasant  and  a  young  man  in  a  blouse. 
The  old  peasant  complained  of  the  times.  "  Formerly  we  all  had 
enough  to  eat  ;  now  there  is  not  enough,"  he  said.  "  People 
are  clever  now.  When  I  was  a  lad,  if  I  did  not  obey  my  grand- 
father immediately,  he  used  to  box  my  ears  ;  now  my  son  is 
surprised  because  I  don't  obey  him.  People  have  all  become 
clever,  and  the  result  is  we  have  got  nothing  to  eat."  The 
young  man  said  the  Government  was  to  blame  for  most  things. 
"  That 's  a  difficult  question  to  be  clear  about.  How  can  we  be 
clear  about  it  ?  We  know  nothing,"  said  the  old  peasant. 
"  You  ought  to  try  and  know,  or  else  things  will  never  gel 
better,"  said  the  young  man.  '  I  don't  want  to  listen  to  a 
Barin  like  you,"  said  the  old  peasant.  "  I'm  not  a  Barm,  I  am 
.1  peasant,  even  as  thou  art,"  said  the  young  man.  "  Nonseni 
said  the  old  peasant.     "  Thou  hot." 

The  discussion  was  then  cut  short  by  our  arrival  .it   St. 
Petersburg. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 
ST.  PETERSBURG 

IN  October  1906  I  took  up  my  duties  as  correspondent 
to  the  Morning  Post  at  St.  Petersburg.  I  took  an 
apartment  on  the  ground  floor  of  a  little  street  running 
out  of  the  Bolshaya  Konioushnaya. 

The  situation  which  was  created  by  the  dissolution  of  the 
Duma  was  aptly  summed  up  by  a  Japanese,  who  said  that  in 
Russia  an  incompetent  Government  was  being  opposed  by  an 
ineffectual  revolution.  Although  no  active  revolution  followed 
the  dissolution  of  the  Duma,  a  sporadic  civil  war  spread  all  over 
the  country,  accompanied  by  anarchy,  and  an  epidemic  of 
political  and  social  crime.  Governors  of  provinces  were  blown 
up ;  Stolypin's  house  was  blown  up,  his  daughter  injured,  and  he 
himself  only  narrowly  escaped  ;  banks  were  robbed  ;  policemen 
were  shot ;  and  the  political  crimes  of  the  Intellectuals  were 
imitated  on  a  wider  scale  by  the  discontented  proletariat  and 
the  criminal  class. 

The  professional  criminals  reasoned  thus  :  "  If  University 
students  can  rob  a  bank  in  a  deserving  public  cause,  why 
should  not  we  tramps  rob  and  kill  a  banker  in  a  deserving 
private  cause  ?  "  "  Expropriation  "  became  a  fashionable  sport 
among  the  criminals,  and  the  prevalence  of  anarchy,  licence,  and 
robbery  under  arms  had  the  effect  of  disgusting  the  man  in  the 
street  with  all  things  revolutionary;  for  all  the  disorder  was 
rightly  or  wrongly  put  down  to  the  revolutionaries.  Had 
it  not  been  for  this  reaction,  this  turn  of  the  tide  in  public 
opinion,  Stolypin  would  have  found  it  impossible  to 
carry  out  his  drastic  measures.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Government  met  the  situation  with  martial  law  and  drum- 
head court-martials ;  revolutionary  and  other  crimes  were 
answered  by  reprisals   and  summary  executions;   and  daily 

the   record  of  crime  and  punishment  increased,  and  Russia 

356 


ST.  PETERSBl  KG  357 

seemed  to  be  caught  in  a  vicious  circle  of  repression  and 
anarchy. 

The  watchword  oi  Stolypin's  policy  was  Order  fir>t,  R<  form 
afterwards. 

He  defended  the  nature  of  the  steps  taken  to  restore  order 
by  saying  that  when  a  house  is  on  fire,  in  order  to  save  what  can 
be  saved,  you  are  obliged  to  hack  down  what  cannot  be  saved, 
ruthlessly.  He  certainly  did  restore  order,  and  he  also  initiated 
certain  large  measures  which  made  for  reform — his  Land  Bill 
and  his  Education  Bill  ;  but  all  the  reforms  that  wen-  started 
during  his  administration  were  curtailed  by  his  successors  ;  and 
the  idea  which  ran  through  the  policy  of  all  Russian  Governments 
like  a  baleful  thread  from  1906  to  1907,  was  to  take  back  with 
one  hand  what  had  been  given  with  the  other. 

Consequently  the  fire  of  discontent,  instead  of  being  ex- 
tinguished, was  maintained  in  a  smouldering  condition. 

The  Manifesto  of  30th  October  1904  promised,  firstly,  the 
creation  of  a  deliberative  and  legislative  Assembly,  without 
whose  consent  no  new  laws  should  be  passed  ;  and  secondly, 
the  full  rights  of  citizenship — the  inviolability  of  the  person, 
freedom  of  conscience,  freedom  of  the  Press,  the  right  of 
organising  public  meetings,  and  founding  associations. 

Practically  speaking,  in  the  years  which  followed  the  grant- 
ing of  this  Charter  until  the  revolution  of  1917,  these  promises 
were  either  not  carried  out  at  all,  or  were  only  allowed  to 
operate  in  virtue  of  temporary  regulations  which  were  (a)  liable 
to  constant  amendment  ;  (b)  could  be  interpreted  by  local 
officials. 

Stolypin's  policy  of  "  Order  first,  Reform  afterwards,"  had 
two  results  :  firstly,  as  soon  as  order  was  restored  by  Stolypin, 
all  ideas  of  reform  were  shelved  by  his  successors.  Stolypin 
himself  was  assassinated.  Secondly,  in  the  eyes  of  the  Ad- 
ministration criticism  became  the  greatest  crime,  because 
criticism  was  held  to  be  subversive  to  the  prestige  of  the 
Government.  The  officials,  and  especially  the  secret  police, 
throve  and  battened  on  this  situation.  Accordingly,  as  order 
was  restored  materia]  prosperity  increased;  but  this  was  a 
palliative  and  not  a  remedy  to  the  fundamental  discontent. 
It  only  led  to  moral  stagnation. 

In  the  autumn  of  ii)o(>,  while  this  cycle  of  anarchy  on  the 
one  hand  and  repression  on  the  other  was  scttim'  in.  elections 


358  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

were  held  for  another  Duma.  I  had  a  long  talk  one  day  with 
Stolypin  himself.  He  struck  me  as  a  man  of  character,  ab- 
solute integrity,  rigida  innocentice,  and  great  personal  courage. 
But  he  had  come  too  late  on  the  scene  of  Russian  politics.  He 
would  have  been  an  admirable  minister  in  the  reign  of  Alexander 
the  Second,  or  Alexander  the  Third.  As  it  was,  he  was  engaged 
not  in  diverting  a  torrent  into  a  useful  and  profitable  channel, 
but  in  damming  it.  He  succeeded  in  damming  it  temporarily ; 
but  the  dam  was  bound  to  be  swept  away,  and  he  paid  for  the 
work  with  his  own  life. 

During  the  winter  I  saw  a  great  many  Russians ;  members 
of  the  Duma  used  to  come  and  dine  with  me,  and  I  was  in  close 
touch  with  the  political  life.  But  the  most  interesting 
experience  I  had  that  winter  was  a  journey  I  made  to  the 
north.     I  will  describe  it  in  detail. 

I  meant  to  go  to  Archangel,  and  I  started  for  Vologda 
at  night.  The  battle  for  a  place  in  the  third-class  carriage 
was  fought  and  won  for  me  by  a  porter.  When  I  stepped 
into  the  third-class  carriage  it  was  like  entering  pande- 
monium. It  was  almost  dark,  save  for  a  feeble  candle  that 
guttered  peevishly  over  the  door,  and  all  the  inmates  were 
yelling  and  throwing  their  boxes  and  baskets  and  bundles 
about.  This  was  only  the  process  of  installation  ;  it  all 
quieted  down  presently,  and  everyone  seated  himself  with 
his  bed  unfolded,  if  he  had  one,  his  luggage  stowed  away,  his 
provisions  spread  out,  as  if  he  had  been  living  there  for  years, 
and  meant  to  remain  there  for  many  years  to  come. 

This  particular  carriage  was  full.  The  people  in  it  were 
workmen  going  home  for  the  winter,  peasants,  merchants,  and 
mechanics.  Opposite  to  my  seat  were  two  workmen  (painters), 
and  next  to  them  a  peasant  with  a  big  grey  beard.  Sitting  by 
the  farther  window  was  a  well-dressed  mechanic.  The  painter 
lighted  a  candle  and  stuck  it  on  a  small  movable  table  that 
projected  from  my  window  ;  he  produced  a  small  bottle  of 
vodka  from  his  pocket,  a  kettle  for  tea,  and  some  cold  sausage, 
and  general  conversation  began.  The  guard  came  to  tell  the 
people  who  had  come  to  see  their  friends  off — there  were  num- 
bers of  them  in  the  carriage,  and  they  were  most  of  them  drunk 
— to  go.  The  guard  looked  at  my  ticket  for  Vologda  and  asked 
me  where  I  was  ultimately  going  to.  I  said :  "  Viatka,"  upon 
which  the  mechanic  said  :  "  So  am  I  ;   we  will  go  together  and 


ST.  PETERSBURG  359 

get  our  tickets  together  at  Vologda."  The  paintei  and  tin- 
mechanic  engaged  in  conversation,  and  it  appeared  that  they 
both  came  from  Kronstadt.  The  painter  had  worked  there 
for  twenty  year-,  and  he  era  questioned  the  mechanic  with 
evident  pleasure,  winking  at  me  every  n<>w  and  then.  Tin- 
mechanic  went  into  the  next  compartment  for  a  moment,  and 
the  painter  then  said  to  me  with  glee  :  "  He  is  lying  ;  he  says 
he  has  worked  in  Kronstadt,  and  he  doesn't  know  where  such 
and  such  things  are."  The  mechanic  came  back.  '  Who  is 
the  Commandant  at  Kronstadt  ?  "  asked  the  painter.  Tin- 
mechanic  evidently  did  not  know,  and  gave  a  name  at  random. 
The  painter  laughed  triumphantly  and  said  that  the  Command- 
ant was  --(line. me  else.  Then  the  mechanic  volunteered  further 
information  to  show  his  knowledge  of  Kronstadt  ;  he  tall 
of  another  man  who  worked  there — a  tall  man  ;  the  painter  said 
that  the  man  was  short.  The  mechanic  said  that  he  was  em- 
ployed in  the  manufacture  of  shells.  They  talked  of  disorders 
at  Kronstadt  that  had  happened  a  year  before.  The  painter 
said  that  he  and  his  son  lay  among  cabbages  while  the  fighting 
was  going  on.  He  added  that  the  matter  had  nearly  ended 
in  the  total  destruction  of  Kronstadt.  "  God  forbid  1  "  said  the 
peasant  sitting  next  to  me.  No  sympathy  was  expressed  with 
the  mutineers.  The  painter  at  last  told  the  mechanic  that  he 
had  lived  for  twenty  years  at  Knmstadt,  and  that  he,  the 
mechanic,  was  a  liar.  The  mechanic  protested  feebly.  He  v 
an  obvious  liar,  but  why  he  told  these  lies  I  have  no  idea.  Per- 
haps he  was  not  a  mechanic  at  all.  Possibly  he  was  a  spy. 
He  professed  to  be  a  native  of  a  village  near  Viatka,  and  declared 
that  he  had  been  absent  for  six  years  (the  next  evening  he  said 
twelve  years). 

From  this  question  of  disorders  at  Kronstadt  the  talk 
veered,  I  forget  how,  to  the  topic  of  the  Duma.  '  Which 
Duma  ?  '  someone  asked  ;  "  the  town  Duma  ?  '  '  No,  the 
State  Duma,"  said  the  mechanic  ;  "  it  seems  they  are  going  to 
have  a  new  one."  '  Nothing  will  come  of  it,"  said  the  painter ; 
"people  will  not  go."  (He  meant  the  voters.)  "No,  they 
won't  go,"  said  the  peasant,  rutting  the  air  with  his  hand  (a 
gesture  common  to  nearly  all  Russians  of  that  class),  "  becaust 
they  know  now  that  it  means  being  put  in  prison."  V 
said  the  painter,  "they  are  hanging  everybody."  And  there 
was  a  knowing  i  h"i  m  of :  "  Tiny  \\<>n't  go  ami  vote  ;  they  know 


36o  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

better."     Then  the  mechanic  left  his  seat  and  sat  down  next 

to  the  painter  and  said  in  a  whisper  :  "  The  Government " 

At  that  moment  the  guard  came  in  ;    the  mechanic  stopped 
abruptly,  and  when  the  guard  went  out,  the  topic  of  conversation 
had  been  already  changed.     I  heard  no  further  mention  of  the 
Duma  during  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  the  journey  to  Vologda. 
The  people  then  began  to  prepare  to  go  to  sleep,  except  the 
peasant,  who  told  me  that  he  often  went  three  days  together 
without  sleep,  but  when  he  did  sleep  it  was  a  business  to  wake 
him.     He  asked  me  if  his  bundle  of  clothes  was  in  my  way. 
'  We  are  a  rough  people,"  he  said,  "  but  we  know  how  not  to 
get  in  the  way.     I  am  not  going  far."     I  was  just  going  to 
sleep  when  I  was  wakened  by  a  terrific  noise  in  the  next  com- 
partment.    Someone  opened  the  door,  and  the  following  scraps 
of  shouted  dialogue  were  audible.     A  voice  :   "  Did  you  say  I 
was  drunk  or  did   you  not  ?  '      Second  voice  (obviously  the 
guard)  :    "  I  asked  for  your  ticket."     First  voice:   "  You  said 
I  was  drunk.     You  are  a  liar."     Second  voice  :    "  You  have 
no  right  to  say  I  am  a  liar.     I  asked  for  your  ticket."     First 
voice  :     '  You  arc  a  liar.     You  said  I  was  drunk.     I  will  have 
you  discharged."     This  voice  then  recited  a  long  story  to  the 
public  in  general.     The  next  day  I  learnt  that  the  offended 
man  was  a  lawyer,  one  of  the  bourgeoisie  (a  workman  explained 
to  me),  and  that  the  guard  had,  in  the  dark,  asked  him  for  his 
ticket,  and  then,  as  he  made  no  sign  of  life,  had  pinched  his  foot ; 
this  having  proved  ineffectual,  he  said  that  the  man  was  drunk  ; 
whereupon  the  man  started  to  his  feet  and  became  wide  awake 
in  a  moment.     Eventually  a  gendarme  was  brought  in,  a  "  pro- 
tocol "  was  drawn  up,  in  which  both  sides  of  the  story  were 
written  down,  and  there,  I  expect,  the  matter  will  remain  until 
the  Day  of  Judgment. 

I  afterwards  made  the  acquaintance  of  two  men  in  the  next 
compartment  ;  they  were  dock  labourers,  and  their  business 
was  to  load  ships  in  Kronstadt.  They  were  exactly  like  the 
people  whom  Gorki  describes.  One  of  them  gave  me  a 
description  of  his  mode  of  life  in  summer  and  winter.  In 
summer  he  loaded  ships  ;  in  winter  he  went  to  a  place  near 
Archangel  and  loaded  carts  with  wood  ;  when  the  spring  came, 
he  went  back,  by  water,  to  St.  Petersburg.  He  asked  me  what 
I  was.  I  said  that  I  was  an  English  correspondent.  He  asked 
then  what  I  travelled  in.     I  said  I  was  not  that  kind  of  corre- 


ST.  PETERSBURG  361 

sponck-nt,  but  a  newspapei  correspondent.     Here  In-  called  a 

third  friend,  who  was  sitting  near  as,  and  said:  "Come  and 
look  ;  there  is  a  correspondent  here.  He  is  an  English  corre- 
spondent." The  friend  tame  -a  man  with  a  red  beard  and  a 
loose  shirt  with  a  pattern  of  Bowers  on  it.  "I  don't  know  you," 
said  the  new  man.  "  No  ;  but  let  us  make  each  other's  ac- 
quaintance," 1  said.  '  You  can  talk  to  him,"  explained  the 
dock  labourer ;  "we  have  been  talking  for  hours;  although 
he  is  plainly  a  man  win.  has  received  bighei  education."  "As 
to  whether  he  has  received  higher  or  lower  edu<  at  ion  we  don't 
know,"  said  the  friend,  "  because  we  haven't  yet  asked  him." 
Then  he  paused,  refla  ted,  shook  hands,  and  exclaimed  :  "  Now 
we  know  each  other."  '  But,"  said  the  dock  labourer,  "  how 
do  you  print  your  arti<  h-^  ?  Do  you  take  a  printing  pn  -  with 
you  when  you  go,  for  instance,  to  the  north,  like  you  are  lining 
now  ?  '  !  said  they  were  printed  in  London,  and  that  I  did  not 
have  to  print  them  myself.  '  Please  send  me  one,"  he  said  ; 
"  I  will  give  you  my  addr-  '  But  it's  written  in  English," 

I  answered.  '  You  can  send  me  a  translation  in  Russian,"  he 
retorted. 

"  English  ships  come  to  Kronstadt,  and  we  load  them.  The 
men  on  board  do  not  speak  Russian,  but  we  understand  each 
other.  For  instance,  we  load,  and  their  inspector  comes.  We 
call  him  '  inspector  '  (I  forget  the  Russian  word  he  used,  but  it 
something  like  skifmdor);  they  call  him  the  'Come  on.' 
The  '  Come  on  '  comes,  and  he  says,  '  That's  no  good  '  ('  Niei 
dobro  ' l)  ;  he  means  not  right  (nie  horosho),  and  then  we  make 
it  right.  And  when  t  Ik  n  'sailors  come,  we  ask  them  for  matches. 
When  we  have  food,  what  we  call  coshevar,  they  call  it  '  all 
right.'  And  when  we  finish  work,  what  we  call  shabasM 
(it  means  '  all  over  '),  they  call  '  seven  o'clock.'  They  bring 
us  matches  that  light  on  anything,"  and  here  he  produced  a 
box  of  English  matches  and  lit  a  dozen  of  them  just  to  show. 
"  When  we  are  ragged,  they  say,  'No  clothes,  plenty  vodka,' 
and  when  we  are  well  dressed,  they  say,  '  No  plenty-vodka, 
plenty-clothes.'  Their  vodka,"  he  added,  "is  very  good." 
Then  followed  an  elaborate  comparison  of  the  wages  and  con- 
ditions of  life  of  Russian  and  English  workmen.  Another  man 
joined  in,  and  being  told  about  the  correspondent,  -aid  :  "  I 
would  like  to  read  your  writings,  because  we  are  a  rough  peopl • 
1  Incorrect  Runian,  meaning  "  There  is  not,  good." 


362  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  we  read  only  the  Pieterbourski  Listok,  which  is,  so  to  speak, 
a  '  black-gang  '  (reactionary)  newspaper.  Heaven  knows  what 
is  happening  in  Russia !  They  are  hanging,  shooting,  and 
bayoneting  everyone."  Then  he  went  away.  The  dock 
labourer  went  on  for  hours  talking  about  the  "  Come  on,"  the 
"  All  right,"  and  the  "  Seven  o'clock." 

I  went  back  to  my  berth  and  slept,  till  the  dock  labourer 
came  and  fetched  me,  and  said  that  I  had  to  see  the  soldiers. 
I  went  into  the  next  compartment,  and  there  were  two  soldiers  ; 
one  was  dressed  up,  that  is  to  say  he  had  put  on  spectacles  and 
a  pocket-handkerchief  over  his  head,  and  was  giving  an  exhibi- 
tion of  mimicry,  of  recruits  crying  as  they  left  home,  of  mothers- 
in-law,  and  other  stock  jokes.  It  was  funny,  and  it  ended  in 
general  singing.  A  sailor  came  to  look  on.  He  was  a  non- 
commissioned officer,  and  he  told  me  in  great  detail  how  a 
meeting  at  Sveaborg  had  been  put  down.  He  said  that  the 
loyal  sailors  had  been  given  150  roubles  (£15)  apiece  to  fight. 
I  think  he  must  have  been  exaggerating.  At  the  same  time  he 
expressed  no  sympathy  with  the  mutineers.  He  said  that 
rights  were  all  very  well  for  countries  such  as  Finland.  But 
in  Russia  they  only  meant  disorder,  and  as  long  as  the  disorder 
lasted,  Russia  would  be  a  feeble  country.  He  had  much  wanted 
to  go  to  the  war,  but  he  had  not  been  able  to.  In  fact,  he  was 
thoroughly  loyal  and  Men  pensant. 

We  arrived  at  Vologda  Station  some  time  in  the  evening. 
The  station  was  crowded  with  peasants.  While  I  was  watching 
the  crowd,  a  drunken  peasant  entered  and  asked  everybody  to 
give  him  ten  kopecks.  Then  he  caught  sight  of  me,  and  said 
that  he  was  quite  certain  I  would  give  him  ten  kopecks.  I  did, 
and  he  danced  a  kind  of  wild  dance  and  finally  collapsed  on 
the  floor.  A  man  was  watching  these  proceedings,  a  fairly 
respectably  dressed  man  in  a  pea-jacket.  He  began  to  talk  to 
me,  and  said  that  he  had  just  come  back  from  Manchuria, 
where  he  had  been  employed  at  Mukden  Station.  "  In  spite  of 
which,"  he  added,  "  I  have  not  yet  received  a  medal."  I  said 
that  I  had  been  in  Manchuria.  He  said  he  lived  twenty  versts 
up  the  line,  and  came  to  the  station  to  look  at  the  people — 
it  was  so  amusing.  "  Have  you  any  acquaintances  here  ?  "  he 
asked.  I  said,  "  No."  "  Then  let  us  go  and  have  tea."  I  was 
willing,  and  we  went  to  the  tea-shop,  which  was  exactly  opposite 
the  station.     "  Here,"  said  the  man,  "  we  will  talk  of  what  was, 


ST.  PETERSBURG 

of  what  is,  and  of  what  is  to  be."  As  we  were  walking  in,  a 
policeman  who  was  standing  1>\  the  door  whispered  in  my  eai  : 
"  I  shouldn't  go  in  there  with  that  gentleman."  "  Why  ?  " 
I  asked.  "  Well,  he's  not  quite  reliable,"  he  ail  wind  in  the 
softest  of  whispers.  "  How  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Well,  lu-  killed  a 
man  yesterday  and  then  robbed  him,"  said  the  policeman.  I 
hurriedly  expressed  my  regret  to  my  new  acquaintance,  and 
said  that  I  must  at  all  costs  return  to  the  station.  '  1  he  police- 
man has  been  lying  to  you,"  said  the  man.  "  It's  a  he  ;  it's 
only  because  I  haven't  got  a  passport."  (This  was  not  exactly 
a  recommendation  in  itself.)  I  went  into  the  first -class  waiting- 
room.  The  man  came  and  sat  down  next  to  me,  and  now  that 
I  examined  his  face  I  saw  that  he  had  the  expression  and  the 
stamp  of  countenance  of  a  born  thief.  One  of  the  waiters  came 
and  told  him  to  go,  and  he  flatly  refused,  and  the  waiter  made  a 
low  bow  to  him.  Then,  gently  but  firmly,  I  advised  him  to  go 
away,  as  it  might  lead  to  trouble.  He  finally  said  :  u  All  right, 
but  we  shall  meet  in  the  train,  in  liberty."  He  went  away,  but 
he  sent  an  accomplice,  who  stood  behind  my  chair.  He,  too, 
had  the  expression  of  a  thief. 

After  waiting  for  several  hours  I  approached  the  train  for 
Yaroslav.  Just  as  I  was  getting  in,  a  small  boy  came  up  to  me 
and  said  in  a  whisper  :  "  The  policeman  sent  me  to  tell  you  that 
the  man  is  a  well-known  thief,  that  he  robs  people  every  day, 
and  that  he  gets  into  the  train,  even  into  the  first-class  carriages, 
and  robs  people,  and  he  is  after  you  now."  I  entered  a  first- 
class  carriage  and  told  the  guard  there  was  a  thief  about.  I 
had  not  been  there  long  before  the  accomplice  arrived  and 
began  walking  up  and  down  the  corridor.  But  the  guard,  I 
,un  happy  to  say,  turned  him  out  instantly,  and  I  saw  nothing 
more  of  the  thief  or  of  his  accomplice. 

A  railway  company  director,  or  rather  a  man  who  was 
arranging  the  purchase  of  a  line,  got  into  the  carriage  and  began 
at  once  to  harangue  me  about  the  Government  and  say  that 
the  way  in  which  it  hail  (hanged  the  election  law  was  a  puce  of 
insolence  and  would  only  make  everybody  more  radical.  Then 
he  told  me  that  life  in  Yaroslav  was  simply  intolerable,  becau-e 
all  newspapers  and  all  free  discussion  had  been  stopped.  We 
arrived  at  Yaroslav  on  the  next  morning.  I  went  on  to  MOSCOW 
in  a  third-class  carriage.  The  train  stopped  at  every  -mall 
station,  and  there  was  a  constant  flow  of  people  coming  and 


364  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

going.  An  old  gentleman  of  the  middle  class  sat  opposite 
to  me  for  a  time,  and  read  a  newspaper  in  an  audible  whisper. 
Whenever  he  came  to  some  doings  of  the  Government  he  said : 
"  Disgraceful,  disgraceful  !  " 

later  on  in  the  day  a  boy  of  seventeen  got  into  the  train. 
He  carried  a  large  box.  I  was  reading  a  book  by  Gogol,  and 
had  put  it  down  for  a  moment  on  the  seat.  He  took  it  up  and 
said  :  "lam  very  fond  of  reading  books."  I  asked  him  how  he 
had  learnt.  He  said  he  had  been  at  school  for  one  year,  and 
had  then  learnt  at  home.  He  could  not  stay  at  school  as  he 
was  the  only  son,  his  father  was  dead,  and  he  had  to  look  after 
his  small  sisters  ;  he  was  a  stone  quarrier,  and  life  was  very  hard. 
He  loved  reading.  In  winter  the  mouzhiks  came  to  him  and  he 
read  aloud  to  them.  His  favourite  book  was  called  Ivan 
Mazcppa.  What  that  work  may  be,  I  did  not  know.  I  gave  him 
my  Gogol.  I  have  never  seen  anyone  so  pleased.  He  began 
to  read  it — at  the  end— then  and  there,  and  said  it  would  last 
for  several  evenings.  When  he  got  out  he  said  :  "  I  will  never 
forget  you,"  and  he  took  out  of  his  pocket  a  lot  of  sunflower 
seeds  and  gave  them  to  me.  As  we  neared  Moscow  the  carriage 
was  fuller  and  fuller.  Two  peasants  had  no  railway  tickets. 
One  of  them  asked  me  if  I  would  lend  my  ticket  to  him  to  show 
the  guard.  I  said  :  "  With  pleasure ;  only,  my  ticket  is  for  Moscow 
and  yours  is  for  the  next  station."  When  the  guard  came,  one 
of  the  peasants  gave  him  30  kopecks.  "  That  is  very  little 
for  two  of  you,"  the  guard  said.  They  had  been  travelling 
nearly  all  the  way  from  Yaroslav  ;  but  finally  he  let  them  be. 
We  arrived  at  Moscow  in  the  evening. 

I  travelled  back  to  St.  Petersburg  in  a  third-class  carriage, 
which  was  full  of  recruits.  "  They  sang  all  the  way  "  (as  Jowett 
said  about  the  poetical  but  undisciplined  undergraduate  *  whom 
he  drove  home  from  a  dinner-party)  "bad  songs — very  bad 
songs."  Not  quite  all  the  way,  however.  They  were  like  school- 
boys going  to  a  private  school,  putting  on  extra  assurance.  In 
the  railway  carriage  there  was  a  Zemstvo  "  Feldsher,"  a  hospital 
orderly,  who  had  been  through  the  war.  We  talked  of  the  war. 
While  we  were  discussing  it,  a  young  peasant  who  was  in  the 
carriage  joined  in,  and  startled  us  by  his  sensible  and  acute 
observations  on  the  war.  "  There's  a  man,"  said  the  Feldsher 
to  me,  "  who  has  a  good  head.     It  is  sheer  natural  clever- 

1  A.  C.  Swinburne. 


ST.  PETERSBURG  {65 

ness.  That's  what  a  lot  of  the  young  peasants  are  like.  And 
what  will  become  of  him  ?  If  only  these  people  could  be 
developed  !  "  A  little  later  I  began  to  read  a  small  book. 
"Are  you  reading  Lcrmontov  ?  "  asked  the  Feldsher.  "  No," 
I  answered,  "  I  am  reading  Shakespeare's  Sonnets."  "  Ah," 
he  said,  with  a  sigh,  "  you  are  evidently  not  a  married  man,  but 
perhaps  you  are  engaged  to  be  married  ?  " 

Just  as  I  was  preparing  to  sleep,  the  guard  came  and  began 
to  search  the  corners  and  the  floor  of  the  carriage  with  a  candle, 
as  if  he  had  dropped  a  pin  or  a  penny.  He  explained  that 
there  were  twelve  recruits  in  the  carriage,  but  that  an  extra 
man  had  got  in  with  them  and  that  he  was  looking  for  him. 
He  then  went  away.  One  of  the  recruits  explained  to  me  that 
the  man  was  under  one  of  the  seats,  and  hidden  by  boxes,  as  lie 
wished  to  go  to  St.  Petersburg  without  a  ticket.  I  went  to 
sleep.  But  the  guard  came  back  and  turned  me  carefully  over 
to  see  if  I  was  the  missing  man.  Then  he  began  to  look  again 
in  the  most  unlikely  places  for  a  man  to  be  hid.  He  gave  up 
the  search  twice,  but  the  hidden  man  could  not  resist  putting 
out  his  head  to  see  what  was  happening,  and  before  he  could 
get  it  back  the  guard  coming  in  at  that  moment  caught  sight  of 
him.  The  man  was  turned  out,  but  he  got  into  the  train  again, 
and  the  next  morning  it  was  discovered  that  he  had  stolen  one 
of  the  recruits'  boxes  and  some  article  of  property  from  nearly 
everybody  in  the  carriage,  including  hats  and  coats.  This  he 
had  done  while  the  recruits  slept,  for  when  they  stopped 
singing  and  went  to  sleep  they  slept  soundly.  Later  in  the 
night,  a  huge  and  old  peasant  entered  the  train  and  crept  under 
the  seat  opposite  to  me.  The  guard  did  not  notice  him,  and 
after  the  tickets  had  been  collected  from  the  passengers  who 
got  in  at  that  station,  the  man  crept  out,  and  lay  down  on  one 
of  the  higher  berths.  He  remained  there  nearly  all  night,  but 
at  one  of  the  stations  the  guard  said  :  "  Is  there  no  one  for  this 
station  ?  "  and  looking  at  the  peasant,  added  :  "  Where  are  you 
for,  old  man  ?  "  The  man  mumbled  in  pretended  sleep.  "  Where 
is  your  ticket  ?  "  asked  the  guard.  No  answer.  At  last  when  the 
question  had  been  repeated  thrice,  he  said  :  "  I  am  a  poor,  little, 
old  man."  "  You  haven't  got  a  ticket,"  said  the  guard.  "  Get 
out,  devil ;  you  might  lose  me  my  place — and  I  a  married  man. 
Devil  !  Devil  !  Devil  !  "  "  It  is  on  account  of  mv  extreme 
poverty,"  said  the  old  nun,  and  he  was  turned  out. 


366  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

The  next  morning  I  had  a  long  conversation  with  the  young 
peasant  who,  the  Feldsher  said,  had  brains.  I  asked  him, 
among  other  things,  if  he  thought  the  Government  was  right 
in  relying  on  what  it  called  the  innate  and  fundamental  con- 
servatism of  the  great  mass  of  the  Russian  people.  "  If  the 
Government  says  that  the  whole  of  the  peasantry  is  Conser- 
vative, it  lies,"  he  said.  "  It  is  true  that  a  great  part  of  the 
people  is  rough — uneducated — but  there  are  many  who  know. 
The  war  opened  our  eyes.  You  see,  the  Russian  peasant  is 
accustomed  to  be  told  by  the  authorities  that  a  glass  (taking 
up  my  tumbler)  is  a  man,  and  to  believe  it.  The  Army  is  on 
the  side  of  the  Government.  At  least  it  is  really  on  the  side 
of  the  people,  but  it  feels  helpless.  The  Government  will 
never  yield  except  to  force.  There  is  nothing  to  be  done."  We 
talked  of  other  things.  The  recruits  joined  in  the  conversation, 
and  I  offered  a  small  meat  patty  to  one  of  them,  who  said  : 
"  No,  thank  you.  I  am  greatly  satisfied  with  you  as  it  is, 
without  your  giving  me  a  meat  patty." 

The  theft  which  had  taken  place  in  the  night  was  discussed 
from  every  point  of  view.  "  We  took  pity  on  him  and  we  hid 
him,"  they  said,  "  and  he  robbed  us."  They  spoke  of  it  without 
any  kind  of  bitterness  or  grievance,  and  nobody  said : 

"  I  told  you  so."     Then  we  arrived  at  St.  Petersburg. 


CHAPTER    XIX 
TRAVEL  IX  RUSSIA 

A  FTER  Christmas,  the  second  Duma  was  convened 
/— \  and  opened.  Its  doings  were  not  interesting.  It 
was  not  a  representative  body,  as  the  elections  had 
been  carefully  arranged  ;  still  it  was  better  than  nothing, 
and  the  very  existence  of  a  Duma  of  any  kind  exercised  a 
negative  effect  on  matters  in  general.  The  Government  could 
be  interpellated.  Questions  could  be  asked.  The  officials  in 
the  country  knew  that  their  doings  could  be  discussed  in  the 
Duma,  and  this  acted  as  a  check.  In  April  1907,  I  had  an 
interview  with  Count  Witte.  Witte  was  a  large,  tall,  burly 
figure,  with  slightly  ravaged  features,  intelligent  eyes,  the 
facile  opportunism  and  the  deep-seated  scepticism  of  those 
who  have  had  a  long  experience  of  affairs,  of  the  ruling  of  men, 
and  the  vicissitudes  of  political  life.  He  received  me  abruptly, 
and  with  a  manner  that,  far  from  being  ingratiating,  seemed  to 
express  the  unspoken  thought,  "  Why  have  you  come  to  bother 
me,"  but  as  the  conversation  went  on  he  melted  and  became 
charming. 

The  first  question  he  asked  me  was  why  I  stayed  such  a 
long  time  in  Russia.  I  said  it  was  because  it  interested  me. 
I  then  said  :  'Things  seem  to  be  going  better."  "  Do  you 
think  so  ?  "  he  asked,  with  a  look  of  amused  scepticism.  I 
asked  him  what  he  thought  of  the  doings  of  the  Extreme  Right, 
the  reactionaries,  who  were  now  playing  a  noisy  and  important 
part  in  political  and  social  life. 

He  said  they  were  a  great  danger.  The  Government  would 
never  dare  to  touch  them.  He  said  both  the  Right  and  the 
Kadets  had  lost  faith  in  him.  The  Kadets  because  he  had 
not  given  them  the  key  of  the  fortress,  and  the  reactionaries 
because  he  had  not  hung  all  the  Liberals.  He  talked  of 
the  Jewish  question,  and  said  that  the  Jews  had  begged  him 

3*7 


36S  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

not  to  give  them  full  rights,  as  they  dreaded  the  consequences 
of  a  sudden  act  of  that  kind.     He  said  he  had  always  thought 
it  impossible  to  give  the  Jews  full  rights  all  at  once.     He  said 
the  Kadets  were  guilty  of  all  that  had  happened  in  Russia  in 
the  last  year,  because  they  had  refused  to  support  him  when 
he  was  Prime  Minister,  and  had  been  unwilling  to  help  him. 
Had  they  done  so  he  might  have  done  a  great  deal.     He  then 
talked  of  Stolypin.     He  said  Stolypin  was  an  honest  man,  with 
no  foresight,  and  a  fatalist.     "  You  can't  govern  if  you  are  a 
fatalist,"  he  said,  with  a  gesture  of  contempt.     He  said  the 
present  electoral  law  was  a  farce,  and  that  the  only  alternative 
was  to  change  it  or  to  go  back  to  the  pre-Duma  state  of  affairs  ; 
and  that  would  not  last  long.     He  said  that  the  Kadets  re- 
cognised their  mistakes  now,  and  their  failure,  and  he  heard 
from  all  quarters  they  were  willing  to  accept  his  leadership  now, 
but  it  was  too  late.     For  a  thousand  reasons  he  would  never 
take  office  again  after  what  he  had  gone  through.     I  asked  him 
how  the  funds  had  been  obtained  for  the  great  general  strike. 
He  said  it  had  all  been  prepared  when  Plehve  was  Minister,  and 
had  been  kept  secret.     He  said  he  considered  the  situation  in 
October  to  have  been  one  of  real  revolution,  as  there  were  then 
no  troops  available  to  deal  with  the  situation. 

The  impression  he  gave  me  was  of  disillusion,  indifference, 
fatigue,  and  invincible  pessimism.  He  evidently  thought  that 
whatever  steps  would  be  taken  would  be  fatal,  and  he  was 
perfectly  right. 

In  May  I  went  back  to  London  and  stayed  there  till  the 
middle  of  July,  when  I  came  back  to  St.  Petersburg. 

I  then  started  for  a  journey  down  the  Volga.  I  went  by 
train  from  St.  Petersburg  to  Ribinsk.  On  the  way  to  Ribinsk 
my  carriage  was  occupied  by  a  party  of  workmen,  including 
a  carpenter  and  a  wheelwright,  who  were  going  to  work  on 
somebody's  property  in  the  Government  of  Tver  ;  they  did 
not  know  whose  property,  and  they  did  not  know  whither 
they  were  going.  They  were  under  the  authority  of  an  old 
man  who  came  and  talked  to  me,  because,  he  said,  the  com- 
pany of  the  youths  who  were  with  him  was  tedious.  He  told 
me  a  great  many  things,  but  as  he  was  hoarse,  and  the  train 
made  a  rattling  noise,  I  could  not  hear  a  word  he  said.  There 
were  also  in  the  carriage  two  Tartars  and  a  small  boy  about 
thirteen  years  old,  who  had  a  domineering  character  and  put 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  369 

himself  in  charge  of  the  1  arriage.    The  di  comfort  of  travelling 
third-class  in  Russia  was  not  the  accommodation,  but  the  freqn 
awakenings  during  the  night  caused  by  p  era  coming  in 

and  by  the  guard  asking  for  one's  ticket.  The  small  boy  with 
the  domineering  character — he  wore  an  old  military  cap  on 
the  back  of  his  head  as  a  sign  of  strength  of  purpose — con- 
tributed in  no  small  degree  to  the  general  discomfort.  He 
apparently  was  in  no  need  of  sleep.  He  went  from  passenger 
to  passenger  telling  them  where  they  would  have  to  change 
and  where  they  would  have  to  get  out,  and  offering  to  open 
the  window  if  needed.  I  had  a  primitive  candlestick  made 
of  a  candle  stuck  into  a  bottle  ;  it  fell  on  my  head  just  as  I 
went  to  sleep,  so  I  put  it  on  the  floor  and  went  to  sleep  again. 
But  the  small  boy  came  and  waked  me,  and  told  me  that  my 
bottle  was  on  the  floor,  and  that  he  had  put  it  back  again. 
I  thanked  him,  but  directly  he  was  out  of  sight  I  put  it  back 
again  on  the  floor,  and  before  long  he  came  back,  waked  me  a 
second  time — and  told  me  that  my  candlestick  had  again 
fallen  down.  This  time  I  told  him,  not  without  emphasis, 
to  leave  it  alone,  and  I  went  to  sleep  again.  But  the  little 
boy  was  not  defeated  ;  he  waked  me  again  with  the  informa- 
tion that  a  printed  advertisement  had  fallen  out  of  the  book 
I  had  been  reading  on  to  the  floor.  Tins  time  I  told  him 
that  if  he  waked  me  again  I  should  throw  him  out  of  the 
window. 

Later  in  the  night  a  tidy-looking  man  of  the  middle-class 
entered  the  carriage  with  his  wife.  They  began  to  chatter, 
and  to  complain  of  the  length  of  the  benches,  the  officious 
boy  with  the  domineering  character  lending  them  his  sympathy 
and  advice.  This  went  on  till  one  of  the  Tartars  could  bear 
it  no  longer,  and  he  called  out  in  a  loud  voice  that  if  they 
wanted  bed-  six  yards  long  they  had  better  not  travel  in  a 
train,  and  that  they  were  making  everybody  else's  sleep 
impossible.  I  blessed  that  Tartar  not  unawares,  and  after 
that  there  was  peace. 

Towards  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  we  arrived  at  Ribinsk, 
and  there  I  embarked  on  a  steamer  to  go  down  the  Volga,  as 
far  as  Nijni-Novgorod.  I  took  a  first-class  ticket  and  received 
a  clean  deck  cabin,  containing  a  leather  sofa  (with  no  blankets 
or  sheets)  and  a  washing-stand  with  a  fountain  tap.  We 
started  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  There  were  Few 
24 


370  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

passengers  on  board.  The  Volga  was  not  what  I  had  expected 
it  would  be  like — what  place  is  ?  I  had  imagined  a  vast 
expanse  of  water  in  an  illimitable  plain,  instead  of  which  there 
was  a  broad,  brown  river,  with  green,  shelving  though  not 
steep  banks,  wooded  with  birch  trees  and  fir  trees  and  many 
kinds  of  shrubs  ;  sometimes  the  banks  consisted  of  sloping 
pastures  and  sometimes  of  cornfields.  In  the  evening  we 
arrived  at  Yaroslav,  a  picturesque  little  city  on  the  top  of  a 
steep  bank.  All  day  long  the  sky  had  been  grey  and  heavy, 
with  long,  piled-up  clouds,  but  the  sun,  as  it  set,  made  for  itself 
a  thin  strip  of  gold  beneath  the  grey  masses,  and  when  it  had 
sunk,  the  masses  themselves  glinted  like  armour,  and  the  strip 
beneath  became  a  stretch  of  pure  and  luminous  twilight.  In 
the  twilight  the  town  was  seen  at  its  best.  I  went  ashore 
and  walked  about  the  streets  of  the  quiet  city  ;  a  sleepy 
town,  with  trees  and  grass  everywhere  (the  trees  dark  in  the 
twilight)  ;  the  houses  low,  two-storied,  and  painted  white, 
with  pale  green  roofs,  ghostlike  in  the  dusk,  ornamented 
with  pilasters,  eighteenth-century  and  Empire  arches  and 
arcades.  Every  now  and  then  one  came  across  a  church  with 
gilt  minarets  glistening  in  what  remained  of  the  sunset. 
The  whole  was  a  symphony  in  dark  green,  white,  and  lilac 
(the  sky  was  lilac  by  now).  The  shops  were  shut,  the 
houses  shuttered,  the  passers-by  few.  The  grass  grew  thick 
on  the  cobble-stones.  I  wandered  about  thinking  how  well 
Vernon  Lee  would  seize  on  the  genius  loci  of  this  sleepy 
city,  dreaming  in  the  lilac  July  twilight,  with  its  alternate 
vistas  of  luminous  white  houses  and  dark  glooms  of  trees. 
How  she  would  extract  the  spirit  of  the  place,  and  find  the 
exact  note  in  other  places  which  it  corresponded  with,  whether 
in  Gascony,  or  Tuscany,  or  Bavaria  ;  and  I  reflected  that  all 
I  could  do  would  be  to  say  I  had  seen  Yaroslav — I  had  walked 
about  in  it — and  that  it  was  a  picturesque  city. 

We  left  Yaroslav  at  eleven  at  night.  In  the  dining-room 
of  the  steamer  I  had  left  a  Tauchnitz  volume  called  Frdulein 
Schmidt  und  Mr.  Anstruther,  by  the  author  of  Elizabeth  and 
her  German  Garden.  I  was  looking  forward  to  reading  this 
before  going  to  sleep  ;  but  this  was  not  to  be.  The  volume 
had  disappeared.  The  next  morning  the  matter  was  explained. 
There  was  a  family  travelling  in  the  steamer,  consisting  of  a 
mother,   a    daughter,   and   a    son.      The   mother  was  young 


TRAVEL  IN   RUSSIA  371 

looking,  although  both  the  daughter  and  son  were  grown  up  ; 
they  had  found  the  book,  and  thought  (I  suppose)  it  had  been 
left  behind,  or  that  it  belonged  to  the  public  library.  The 
book  occupied  them  for  the  rest  of  the  journey.  They  talked 
of  nothing  else.  The  mother  had  read  it  before.  The  daughter 
must  have  sat  up  late  reading  it,  because  she  handed  it  over 
to  the  son  early  in  the  morning.  They  all  thought  it 
interesting,  but  they  evidently  disagreed  about  it.  These 
are  the  things  which  ought  t<>  please  an  author. 

We  reached  Nijni-Novgorod  the  next  morning  at  eight.  I 
took  a  cab.  '  Drive,"  I  said,  "  to  the  best  hotel."  "  There  is 
the  Hotel  Ro>-ia  at  the  top  of  the  town,  and  the  Hotel  Peters- 
burg at  the  bottom,"  the  cabman  answered.  "  Which  is  the 
best  ?  '  I  asked.  '  The  Hotel  Rossia  is  the  best  at  the  top 
of  the  town,"  he  answered,  "  and  the  Hotel  Petersburg  is  the 
best  at  the  bottom."  '  Which  is  the  most  central  ?  "  I  asked. 
"  The  Rossia  is  the  most  central  at  the  top,  and  the  Petersburg 
is  the  most  central  at  the  bottom."  "  Which  is  nearest  the 
Fair  ?  "  "  They  are  neither  near  the  Fair."  "  Are  there  no 
hotels  near  the  Fair  ?  '  '  There  are  no  hotels  near  the  Fair 
in  the  town." 

We  drove  to  the  Rossia,  a  long  way  up  a  very  steep  hill, 
past  the  Kremlin — a  hill  like  Windsor  Hill,  only  twice  as  long. 
The  Kremlin  is  like  Windsor,  supposing  the  outside  walls  of 
Windsor  had  never  been  restored  and  the  castle  were  taken 
away.  When  we  got  to  the  hotel  the  cabman  said  :  "  This 
part  of  the  town  is  deserted  in  summer  ;  nobody  lives  here  ; 
everybody  lives  near  the  Fair."  '  But  I  said  I  wanted  to  be 
in  the  Fair,"  I  answered.  "  Oh  !  "  he  answered ;  "  of  course 
if  you  want  to  be  in  the  Fair  there  are  plenty  of  hotels  in  the 
Fair."  So  we  drove  down  again,  right  into  the  lower  part  of 
the  town,  and  thence  across  a  large  wooden  bridge  into  the  Fair. 

Nijni-Novgorod  occupies  both  sides  of  the  Volga.  On  one 
side  there  is  a  steep  hill,  a  Kremlin,  and  a  town  covering  the 
hill  till  it  reaches  the  quays  and  extending  along  them ; — on 
the  other  side  a  huge  plain  and  the  Fair.  The  hill  part  of  the 
town  is  wooded  and  green  ;  the  Fair  was  a  town  in  itself,  and 
during  the  Fair  period  the  whole  business  of  life — shops,  including 
hotels,  theatre-,  banks,  baths,  post,  exchange,  restaurants — was 
transferred  thither.  The  shops  were  one-storied  and  occupied 
square  blocks,  which  they  intersected  in  parallel  lines.     They 


372  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

were  of  every  description  and  quality,  ranging  from  the  supply 
of  the  needs  of  the  extremely  rich  to  those  of  the  extremely 
poor.  I  found  a  room  in  an  hotel.  The  hotels  were  crowded, 
although  I  was  told  that  the  Fair  had  never  been  so 
empty.  It  had  not  been  open  long,  and  merchants  were  still 
arriving  daily  with  their  goods.  The  centre  of  the  Fair  was  a 
house  called  the  "  Glavnii  Dom,"  the  principal  house  ;  here  the 
post  and  the  police  were  concentrated,  and  the  most  important 
shops — Fabergd,  for  instance.  There  were  many  dealers  in 
furs  and  skins  ;  I  bought  nothing,  in  spite  of  great  tempta- 
tion, except  a  blanket  and  a  clothes-brush.  The  blankets 
were  dear.  Star  sapphires,  on  the  other  hand,  seemed  to  be 
as  cheap  as  dirt.  I  never  quite  understood  when  the  people 
had  their  meals  at  the  Fair.  The  restaurants,  and  there  were 
many,  seemed  to  be  empty  all  day  ;  they  were  certainly  full 
all  night.  Perhaps  the  people  did  not  eat  during  the  daytime. 
In  every  restaurant  there  was  a  theatrical  performance,  which 
began  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  and  went  on  until  four 
o'clock  the  next  morning,  with  few  interruptions ;  it  consisted 
mostly  of  singing  and  dancing. 

What  surprised  and  struck  me  most  about  the  Fair  was 
the  great  size  of  it.  I  had  not  guessed  that  the  Fair  was  a 
large  town  consisting  entirely  of  shops,  hotels,  and  restaurants. 
The  most  important  merchandise  that  passed  hands  at  the 
Fair  was  furs.  But  there  were  goods  of  every  variety : 
second-hand  books,  tea,  and  silks  from  China,  gems  from  the 
Urals,  and  art  nouveau  furniture.  There  were  also  old  curiosity 
shops  rich  in  church  vestments,  stiff  copes  and  jewelled 
chasubles,  which  would  be  found  most  useful  by  those  people 
who  like  to  furnish  their  drawing-rooms  entirely  with  objects 
diverted  from  their  proper  use  ;  that  is  to  say,  teapots  made 
out  of  musical  instruments  and  old  book  bindings.  Nijni, 
during  the  Fair,  was  almost  entirely  inhabited  by  merchants 
— merchants  of  every  kind  and  description.  The  majority 
of  them  wore  loose  Russian  shirts  and  top-boots.  I  noticed 
that  at  Nijni  it  did  not  in  the  least  signify  how  untidily 
one  was  dressed  ;  however  untidy  one  looked,  one  was  sure  of 
being  treated  with  respect,  because  slovenliness  at  Nijni  did 
not  necessarily  imply  poverty,  and  the  people  of  the  place 
justly  reasoned  that  however  sordid  our  exterior  appearance 
might  be,  there  was  no  knowing  but  it  might  clothe  a  million- 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  373 

aire.  Another  thing  which  struck  me  here,  a  thing  which  has 
struck  me  in  several  other  places,  was  the  way  in  which  people 
determined  your  nationality  by  your  clothes.  While  they  paid 
no  attention  to  degree  in  the  matter  <>f  clothes  at  Nijni,  as  to 
whether  they  were  shabby  or  new,  they  paid  a  great  deal  of 
attention  to  kind.  For  instance,  the  day  I  arrived  I  was  wear- 
ing an  ordinary  English  straw  hat.  This  headgear  caused  quite 
a  sensation  amongst  the  sellers  of  Astrakan  fur.  They  crowded 
round  me,  crying  out  :  "  Vairy  nice,  vairy  cheap,  Engleesh." 
I  bought  a  different  kind  of  hat,  a  white  yachting  cap,  and 
loose  silk  Russian  ^hirt,  such  as  the  merchants  wore. 

That  evening  I  went  to  a  restaurant  at  which  there  was  a 
musical  performance.     I  fell  into  conversation  with  a  young 
merchant  sitting  at  the  next  table,  and  he  said  to  me  after  we 
had  had  some   conversation:    "You  are,  I  suppose,  from  the 
Caucasus."     I   said   "  No."     We   talked   of  other   things,   the 
Far  East  among  other  topics.     He  then  exclaimed  :     '  You  are, 
I  suppose,  from  the  Far  East."     I  again  said  "No,"  and  we 
again  talked  of  other  things.     He  had  some  friends  with  him 
who  joined  in  the  conversation,  and  they  were  consumed  with 
curiosity  as  to  whence  I  had  come,  and  I  told  them  they  could 
guess.     They  guessed  various  places,  such  as  Archangel,  Irkutsk. 
Warsaw,  and  Saghalien,  and  at  last  one  of  them  cried  out  with 
joy  :    "  I  know  what  place  you  belong  to  ;   you  are  a  native  of 
Nijni."     They  went  away  triumphant.     Their  place  was  taken 
by  a  very  old  merchant,  a  rugged,  grey-haired,  bearded  peasant. 
He  looked  on  at  the  singing  and  dancing  which  was  taking 
place  on  the  stage  for  some  time,  and  then  he  said  to  me  : 
"  Don't    you   wish    you    were    twenty    years    younger  ? "      I 
said  I  did,  but  I  did  not  think  that  I  should  in  that  case  be 
better  equipped  for  this  particular  kind   of   entertainment,  as 
I  should  be  only  twelve  years  old.     "  Impossible  !  "  said  the 
old  man  indignantly.     "  You  are  quite  bald,  and  bear  every 
sign  of  old  age." 

I  left  Nijni  on  the  wrong  steamer — that  is  to  say,  by  a  line 
I  did  not  mean  to  patronise,  because  I  knew  it  was  the  worst. 
There  was  no  help  for  it,  because  my  passport  was  not  ready 
in  time.  I  took  a  first-class  cabin  on  a  big  steamer  full  of 
children  with  their  nurses  and  parents.  The  children  ran  about 
the  cabin  all  day  long  without  stopping.  Children,  I  noticed, 
are  the  same  all  over  the  world  :   they  play  the  same  gam< 


374  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

they  make  the  same  noise.  In  this  case  there  were  five  sisters 
and  a  small  brother.  What  reminded  me  much  of  all  children 
in  general,  and  of  my  own  experience  as  a  child  in  particular, 
was  that  the  boy  suddenly  began  to  howl  because  his  sisters 
wouldn't  let  him  play  with  them,  and  he  cried  out :  "  I  want  to 
play  too  "  ;  and  the  sisters,  when  the  matter  was  finally  brought 
before  an  arbitration  court  of  parents,  who  were  playing  cards, 
said  that  the  boy  made  all  games  impossible.  Also  there 
were  three  nurses  in  the  cabin,  who,  whatever  the  children  did, 
told  them  not  to  do  it ;  and  every  now  and  then  one  heard 
familiar  phrases  such  as  "  Don't  sit  on  the  oilcloth  with  your 
bare  legs."  '  Don't  lean  out  of  the  window  with  that  cold 
of  yours."     The  passengers  on  the  boat  were  uninteresting. 

There  was  a  couple  who  spoke  bad  French  to  each  other 
out  of  refinement,  but  who  relapsed  into  Russian  when  they 
had  really  something  interesting  to  say.  There  was  a  student 
who  played  the  pianoforte  with  astonishing  facility  and  amazing 
execution  ;  there  were  the  elder  sisters  of  the  small  children, 
who  also  played  the  pianoforte  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  young 
people  play  it  in  England — that  is  to  say,  with  convulsive  jerks 
over  the  difficult  passages,  and  uninterrupted  insistence  on  the 
loud  pedal,  and  a  foolish  bass.  The  grown-up  members  of 
the  party  played  "  Vindt  "  all  day. 

When  we  arrived  at  Kazan  I  got  out  to  look  at  the  town. 
It  also  possesses  a  Kremlin  with  white  walls  and  crenellated 
towers  and  old  churches,  a  museum  of  uninteresting  objects, 
and  a  large  monastery.     It  was  the  most  stagnant -looking  city. 

The  Volga  beyond  Nijni  is  considerably  broader.  It  is  never 
less  than  1200  yards  in  breadth,  and  from  Nijni  onwards,  on  the 
right  bank  of  the  river,  there  is  a  range  of  lofty  hills,  mostly 
wooded,  but  sometimes  rocky  and  grassy,  which  go  sheer  down 
into  the  river.  The  left  bank  is  flat,  and  consists  of  green 
meadows.  Below  Kazan  it  is  joined  by  the  river  Kama,  and 
becomes  a  mighty  river,  never  less  than  three-quarters  of  a 
mile  in  breadth.  In  various  parts  of  its  course  the  Volga 
reminded  me  of  almost  rery  river  I  had  ever  seen,  from 
the  Dart  to  the  Liao-hc,  and  from  the  Neckar  to  the  Nile. 
Below  Kazan  its  aspect  was  gloomy  and  sombre,  a  great 
stretch  of  broad  brown  waters,  a  wooded  mountainous  bank 
on  one  side,  a  monotonous  plain  on  the  other.  But  when  the 
weather  was  fine — and  it  was  gloriously  fine  after  we  reached 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  375 

Kazan — the  effects  of  light  on  the  great  1  K]  use  of  water  were 
miraculous.  It  is  at  dawn  that  you  feel  the  magic  of  these 
waters  ;  at  dawn  and  at  sunset  wh»  n  the  great  broad  expanse, 
turning  to  gold  or  to  silver,  according  as  the  sky  is  crimson, 
mauve,  or  rosy  and  grey,  has  a  mystery  and  majesty  of  its  own. 
We  met  other  steamers  on  the  way,  but  during  the  whole  voyage 
from  Nijni  to  Astrakan  we  only  passed  two  small  sailing  boats. 

I  got  out  at  Samara  and  spent  the  night  at  an  hotel.  The 
next  day  I  embarked  again  for  Astrakan,  after  having  explored 
the  town,  in  which  I  failed  to  find  an  object  of  interest.  From 
Samara  to  Saratov  the  hills  on  the  right  bank  of  the  river 
diminish  in  size,  and  instead  of  descending  sheer  into  the  river, 
they  slope  away  from  it  ;  and  as  the  hills  diminish,  the  vegetation 
grows  more  scanty.  The  left  bank  is  flat  and  monotonous  as 
before.  From  Samara  to  Saratov  I  travelled  third-class,  to 
see  what  it  was  like  on  board  the  steamer.  There  are  on  the 
steamer  four  official  classes  and  an  unofficial  fifth-class.  The 
third-class  have  a  general  cabin  on  the  lower  deck  with  two  tiers 
of  bunks.  The  fourth-class  have  a  kind  of  enclosure,  which 
contains  one  large  broad  board  on  which  they  encamp.  The 
fourth-class  contains  the  "  steerage  "  passengers.  It  is  in- 
describably dirty.  The  fifth-class  is  composed  of  still  dirtier 
and  still  poorer  people,  who  lie  about  on  boxes,  bales,  or  on 
whatever  vacant  space  they  can  find  on  the  lower  deck.  They 
lie,  for  the  most  part,  like  corpses,  in  a  profound  slumber,  gener- 
ally face  downwards,  flat  upon  the  floor.  The  third-class  is 
respectable  and  decently  clean  ;  it  has,  moreover,  one  immense 
advantage — some  permanently  open  windows.  In  the  first- 
class  there  was  among  the  company  a  great  aversion  to  draughts. 
They  had  not  what  someone  once  called  "  La  passion  des  Anglais 
pour  les  courants  d'air."  In  the  third-class  there  was  no  such 
prejudice.  The  passengers  were  various.  There  were  two 
students,  some  merchants,  twenty  Cossacks  going  home  on 
leave,  a  policeman,  a  public  servant,  several  peasants,  and  a 
priest . 

On  the  bunk  just  over  mine  sprawled  a  large  bearded 
Cossack,  who  at  once  asked  me  where  I  was  going,  my  occupa- 
tion, my  country,  and  my  name.  I  told  him  that  I  was  a 
newspaper  correspondent  and  an  Englishman.  I  then  lay 
down  on  my  bunk.  Am  »1  her  Cossack  fn  m  the  other  side  of  the 
cabin  called  oul   at  the  top  of  his  voice  to  the  man  who  was 


376  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

over  me  :  '  Who  is  that  man  ?  "  "  He  is  a  foreigner."  "  Is 
he  travelling  with  goods  ?  "  "  No  ;  he  is  just  travelling,  nothing 
more."  '  Where  does  he  come  from  ?  "  "I  don't  know." 
Then,  looking  down  at  me  from  his  bunk,  the  Cossack  who  was 
above  me  said  :  "  Thou  art  quite  bald,  little  father.  Is  it  illness 
that  did  it,  or  nature?"  "  Nature,"  I  answered.  "  Shouldst 
try  an  ointment,"  he  said.  "  I  have  tried  many  and  strong 
ointments,"  I  said,  "  including  onion,  tar,  and  paraffin,  none  of 
which  were  of  any  avail.  There  is  nothing  to  be  done."  "  No," 
said  the  Cossack,  with  a  sigh.  "  There  is  nothing  to  be  done. 
It  is  God's  business." 

There  was  no  particular  discomfort  in  travelling  third-class 
in  the  steamer.  The  bunks,  with  the  aid  of  blankets,  were  as 
comfortable  as  those  in  the  first-class.  One  could  obtain  the 
same  food,  and  there  was  plenty  of  fresh  air.  Nevertheless, 
if  one  only  travelled  thus  for  a  day  and  a  night,  it  was  in- 
describably fatiguing,  because  one  had  to  change  and  readjust 
one's  hours.  For  at  the  first  streak  of  dawn,  the  people  began 
to  talk,  and  by  sunrise  they  had  washed  and  were  having  tea. 
It  is  not  as  if  they  went  to  bed  earlier.  For  all  day  long  they 
talked,  and  they  went  to  sleep  quite  late,  about  eleven.  But 
they  had  the  blessed  gift,  possessed  by  Napoleon,  of  snatching 
half-hours  or  five  minutes  of  sleep  whenever  they  felt  in  need 
of  it.  If  one  travelled  like  this  for  several  days  running,  one 
got  used  to  it,  of  course,  and  one  also  acquired  the  habit  of 
snatching  sleep  at  odd  moments  during  the  daytime  ;  but  if  one 
travelled  like  this  for  a  day  or  two,  it  was,  as  I  have  said 
already,  extremely  tiring. 

The  public  servant,  who  had  a  small  post  in  some  provincial 
town,  came  and  talked  to  me.  He  asked  me  if  Chaliapine,  the 
famous  singer,  had  sung  at  Nijni.  Chaliapine,  he  added,  was 
his  master.  '  I  have,"  he  said,  "a  magnificent  bass  voice." 
"  Are  you  fond  of  music  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Fond  of  music  !  "  he 
cried.  '  When  I  hear  music  I  am  like  a  wild  animal.  I  go 
mad."  '  Do  you  mean  to  go  on  the  stage  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Yes," 
he  said,  "  when  I  have  learnt  enough.  In  the  meantime  I  am 
a  public  servant — lam  in  the  Government  service."  "That, 
I  suppose,  you  find  tedious  ?  "  I  said.  "  It  is  more  than  tedious  ; 
it  is  disgusting,"  and  he  began  to  abuse  the  Government.  I 
said  :  "  There  is  a  great  difference  between  the  Russia  of  to-day 
and  the  Russia  of  four  years  ago."     "  There  is  no  difference 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  377 

at  all,"  he  said  ;  "  we  have  obtained  absolutely  nothing  except 
paper  promises."  I  said  :  "  I  am  not  talking  of  what  the  Govern- 
ment has  done  or  failed  to  do  ;  I  am  talking  of  the  general 
aspect  of  things,  of  Russian  life  as  it  strikes  a  foreigner.  I  was 
here  three  or  four  years  ago,  and  I  am  struck  by  the  great 
difference  between  then  and  now.  Had  I  met  you  then,  you 
would  not  have  talked  politics  with  me  ;  there  were  no  politics 
to  talk."  'That  is  true,"  he  answered;  "we  have  now  a 
political  life." 

Here  one  of  the  Cossacks  asked  him  who  he  was.  "  I  am  a 
famous  singer^"  he  answered.     "  I  have  sung  at  the  Merchants' 

Club  at  the  district  town  of  A .    I  am  a  pupil  of  Chaliapine, 

who  is  the  king  of  basses  and  is  well  known  throughout  the 
whole  civilised  world,  and  who  has  sung  in  America.  He  is  a 
Russian.  Think  of  that."  The  Cossack  seemed  impressed. 
The  singer  got  out  at  one  of  the  stations. 

The  people  in  the  cabin  had  their  meals  at  different  times 
of  the  day ;  the  chief  meal  was  tea,  which  took  place  twice  a 
day.  Every  time  we  stopped  at  a  place  a  crowd  of  beggars 
invaded  our  cabin  asking  for  alms.  The  interesting  point  is 
that  they  received  them.  They  were  never  sent  empty  away, 
and  were  invariably  given  either  some  coppers,  some  bread,  or 
some  melon.  I  am  sure  there  is  no  country  in  the  world  where 
people  give  so  readily  to  the  poor  as  in  Russia.  One  had  only 
to  walk  about  the  streets  in  any  Russian  town  to  notice  this 
fact.  Here  in  the  third-class  saloon  it  especially  struck  me. 
I  did  not  see  one  single  beggar  turned  away  without  a  gift  of 
some  kind.  One  little  boy  was  given  a  piece  of  bread  and  a 
large  slice  of  water-melon. 

At  the  many  small  stations  at  which  we  called  on  the  banks 
of  the  river  there  were  crowds  of  itinerant  vendors  selling 
various  descriptions  of  food — hot  pies,  fried  fish,  gigantic 
water-melons,  apples,  red  currants,  and  cucumbers.  The 
whole  duration  of  each  stop  at  any  of  these  places  was  occupied 
by  the  unloading  and  loading  of  the  steamer  with  goods.  This 
was  done  by  a  horde  of  creatures  in  red  and  blue  shirts  called 
loaders,  who  had  a  kind  of  ledge  strapped  on  to  their  back- 
which  enabled  them  to  support  enormon-  load-.  Like  big 
gnomes,  during  the  whole  of  the  stop,  they  scurried  from  the 
hold  of  the  steamer  to  the  wooden  quay  and  back  again  to  the 
steamer.     On  the  quay  itself,  < lithei  placidly  looking  on  and 


37$  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

munching  sunflower  seeds,  or  else  wildly  gesticulating  over  a 
bargain  at  a  booth,  a  motley  herd  of  passengers  and  inhabitants 
of  the  place  swarmed  :  many-coloured,  bright,  ragged,  and 
squalid,  like  the  crowds  depicted  in  a  sacred  picture  waiting 
for  a  miracle  or  a  parable  under  the  burning  sky  of  Palestine. 

Samara  and  Saratov  have  not  the  features  which  characterise 
the  towns  of  the  Upper  Volga.  They  have  no  Kremlin,  no 
remains  of  a  fortress  dominating  the  town  and  enclosed  in  old 
walls.  Saratov  is  a  collection  of  wooden  houses  which  look  as 
if  they  had  been  made  by  a  Swiss  artisan  for  the  Earl's  Court 
Exhibition  and  exposed  on  the  side  of  a  steep  hill. 

Between  Saratov  and  Tzaritsin  the  character  of  the  river 
changes  altogether,  the  vegetation  begins  to  dwindle ;  the  great 
hills  on  the  right  bank  of  the  river  diminish,  and  the  farther  one 
travels  south,  the  lower  they  become.  The  left  bank  is  flat, 
monotonous,  and  green  as  before.  The  river  itself  broadens, 
and  in  some  places  it  is  several  kilometres  wide.  You  get  the 
impression  that  you  are  travelling  on  a  large  lake  or  on  a  sea, 
rather  than  on  a  river.  The  farther  south  one  travels,  the 
greater  is  the  beauty  of  the  river.  It  is  a  solemn,  majestic 
river  ;  one  understands  its  having  been  the  mother  and  in- 
spirer  of  a  quantity  of  poetry,  of  folk-song  and  folk-lore  ;  and 
one  understands,  too,  how  appropriate  the  deep  octaves,  the 
broad,  slow-dying  notes  and  echoes  of  the  Volga  songs  are  to 
these  great,  melancholy  spaces  of  shining  water.  Every  day 
on  the  steamer  between  Saratov  and  Astrakan  I  awoke  at  dawn 
and  went  out  on  to  the  deck  to  sniff  the  freshness  and  to  watch 
the  process  of  daybreak.  The  soft,  grey  sky  trembled  into  a 
delicate  tint  of  lilac,  and  over  the  far-off  banks  of  the  river, 
which  were  distant  enough  to  have  the  appearance  of  a  range 
of  violet  hills,  came  the  first  blush  of  dawn,  and  then  a  deeper 
rose,  while  the  whole  upper  sky  was  washed  with  a  clean 
daffodil  colour,  which  was  reflected  in  silver  on  the  blue  water. 
And  then  the  sun  rose — a  huge  red  ball  of  fire,  casting  golden 
scales  beneath  him  on  to  the  water. 

Towards  noon,  perhaps,  the  sky  would  be  piled  with  white 
clouds,  and  the  river  look  like  an  immense  hard  glass,  reflect- 
ing in  unruffled  detail  every  curve  and  shadow  of  the  cloudland, 
and  the  small  motionless  trees  of  the  banks  which  in  the  sun- 
less heat  are  as  unreal  as  a  mirage.  Later  in  the  afternoon  the 
water  seemed  to  grow  more  and  more  luminous  :  the  sensation 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  379 

of  some  kind  of  enchantment,  of  something  wizard-like  and  un- 
real, increased,  and  one  would  not  have  been  surprised  to  catch 
sight  of  the  walls  of  Tristram'>  (  a^tle-in-the-air,  the  wizard  wall- , 
to  which  he  promised  to  bring  Iseult — the  castle  built  of  the 
stuff  which  rainbows  are  made  of,  of  fire,  dew,  and  the  colours 
of  the  morning.  But  with  the  sunset  this  feeling  of  unreality 
and  enchantment  ceased  ;  the  nearer  bank  stood  out  in  sharp 
outline,  intensely  real,  between  purple  skies  and  grey  waters; 
and  over  the  farther  bank  hung  the  intense  blue  of  woody 
distances.  Between  Tzaritsin  and  Astrakan  the  character 
of  the  river  changes  yet  again.  The  hills  on  the  right  bank 
vanish  altogether  ;  both  the  banks  were  flat  now — unlimited 
steppes  with  scant  vegetation,  culminating  in  steep  banks  of 
yellow  sand.  It  was  here  that  the  river  reminded  me  of 
the  Nil-. 

Tzaritsin  itself  is  a  great  trade  centre  ;  the  best  caviare 
and  the  best  w.der-melons  used  to  be  obtained  there.  Most  of 
the  third-class  passengers  got  out  at  Tzaritsin.  I  was  amused 
by  the  process,  which  I  watched  on  shore,  of  a  huge  block 
of  stone  being  hauled  up  a  hill  by  a  gang  of  workmen. 
The  spectacle  was  so  utterly  unlike  anything  in  other 
countries.  Pieces  of  rock  are  also  hauled  up  hills  in  other 
lands,  but  the  manner  in  which  it  is  done  is  different.  Seven 
men  were  hauling  the  rope  ;  they  were  ragged,  dirty,  and 
dressed  in  red  and  blue  shirts,  stained  and  dusty,  while 
their  tufts  of  yellow  hair  stuck  out  of  their  tattered  peaked 
caps.  By  the  block  of  stone  stood  the  leader  of  the  gang. 
Then  suddenly,  when  he  thought  the  time  had  come,  he  intoned 
a  chant,  a  solo,  about  fifteen  notes,  which  might  have  been 
written  in  the  Scotch  scale  (the  scale  of  G  major  without  the 
F  sharp),  plaintive  and  unexpected  ;  then  he  beat  time  with  a 
wave  of  his  left  hand,  and  at  the  fourth  beat,  the  whole  gang 
chimed  in,  imitating  the  melody  in  a  rough  counterpoint,  and 
hauling  as  they  sang,  and  then  abruptly  ending  on  the  dominant. 
After  a  short  pause,  the  leader  again  intoned  his  solo  and  the 
chorus  again  repeated  and  imitated  the  plaintive  melody,  and 
this  was  repeated  till  the  block  of  stone  was  hauled  up  the 
hill. 

The  climate,  when  Tzaritsin  was  passed,  grew  hotter  and 
hotter,  and  the  breeze  made  by  the  steamer  only  increased  the 
heat.      The  moon  rose,  and  for  a  while  the  sky  was  still  tinged 


38o  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

with  the  stain  of  the  sunset  in  the  west,  and  the  water  was 
luminous  with  a  living  whiteness.  Then,  rapidly,  because  the 
twilight  did  not  last  long  here,  came  the  darkness,  and  with  it 
something  strange  and  wonderful.  We  became  conscious  of  an 
extraordinary  fragrance  in  the  air.  It  was  not  merely  the 
sweetness  of  summer  night.  It  was  a  pungent  and  aromatic ' 
incense  which  pervaded  the  atmosphere — warm  and  delicious 
and  filled  with  the  essence  of  summer.  It  was  intoxicating  ; 
it  came  over  you  like  a  great  wave,  a  breath  of  Elysium. 
And  the  night  with  its  web  of  stars,  and  the  dark  waters, 
and  the  thin  line  of  the  far-off  banks,  made  you  once  more 
lose  the  sense  of  reality.  You  had  reached  another  world — 
the  nether-world,  perhaps  ;  you  breathed  "  the  scent  of  alien 
meadows  far  away,"  and  you  felt  as  if  you  were  sailing  down 
the  river  of  oblivion  to  the  harbours  of  Proserpine.  This 
wonderful  sweetness  came,  I  learnt,  from  the  new-mown  hay, 
the  mowing  of  which  takes  place  late  here.  The  hay  lay  in 
great  masses  over  the  steppes,  embalming  the  midnight  air  and 
turning  the  world  into  paradise. 

On  reaching  Astrakan,  you  were  plunged  into  the  atmosphere 
of  the  East.  On  the  quays  there  were  many  booths  groaning 
with  every  kind  of  fruit,  and  a  coloured  herd  of  people 
living  in  the  dust  and  the  dirt  ;  splendidly  squalid,  noisy 
as  parrots,  and  busy  doing  nothing,  like  wasps.  The  rail- 
way to  Astrakan  was  not  yet  finished,  so  you  were  obliged 
to  return  to  Tzaritsin  by  steamer  if  you  wished  to  get  back 
to  the  centre  of  Russia.  I  pursued  this  course,  and  from 
Tzaritsin  took  the  train  for  Tambov.  The  train  started  from 
Tzaritsin  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  ;  I  arrived  at  the  station 
at  midnight,  and  at  this  hour  the  station  was  crammed  with 
people.  Imagine  a  huge  high  waiting-room  with  three  tables 
d'hote  parallel  to  each  other  in  the  centre  of  it  ;  at  one  end 
of  the  hall  a  buffet  ;  on  the  sides  of  it,  under  the  windows, 
tables  and  long  seats  padded  with  leather,  partitioned  off  and 
forming  open  cubicles.  These  seats  were  always  occupied, 
and  the  occupants  went  to  bed  on  them,  wrapped  up  in  blankets, 
and  propped  up  by  pillows,  bags,  rugs,  baskets,  kettles,  and 
other  impedimenta.  The  whole  of  this  refreshment  hall  was 
filled  with  sleeping  figures.  There  were  people  lying  asleep  on 
the  window-sills,  and  others  on  chairs  placed  together.  Some 
merely  laid  their  heads  on  the  table  d'hote,  and  fell  into  a 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  381 

deep  slumber.  It  was  like  the  scene  in  The  Sleeping  Beauty 
in  the  Wood,  when  sleep  overtook  the  inhabitants  of  the  casth-. 
There  was  a  bookstall  and  a  newspaper  kiosk.  The  bookstall 
contained — as  usual — the  works  of  Jerome  K.  Jerome  and 
Conan  Doyle,  some  translations  of  French  novels,  some  political 
pamphlets,  a  translation  of  John  Moihy's  Compromise,  and  an 
essay  on  Ruskin — a  strange  medley  of  literary  food.  At  the. 
newspaper  kiosk,  the  newsvendor  was  so  busily  engrossed  in 
reading  out  a  story,  which  had  just  appeared  in  the  newspapers, 
about  a  saintly  peasant  who  killed  a  baby  because  he  thought  it 
was  the  Antichrist,  that  it  was  impossible  to  attract  his  atten- 
tion. His  audience  were  the  policeman,  one  of  the  porters,  and 
a  kind  of  sub-guard.  The  story  was  indeed  a  curious  one,  and 
caused  a  considerable  stir.  I  wrote  about  it  later  on  in  the 
Morning  Post. 

The  journey  to  Tambov  was  long ;  in  my  carriage  a  rail- 
way official  drank  tea,  ate  apples,  and  sighed  over  the  political 
condition  of  the  country.  Everything  was  as  bad  as  bad 
could  be.  It  is  a  sad  business,"  he  said,  "  living  in  Russia 
now."  Then,  after  some  reflection,  he  added:  "  But,  perhaps 
in  other  countries — in  England,  for  instance — people  sometimes 
find  fault  with  the  Government."  I  told  him  they  did  little 
else.  He  then  took  a  large  roll  out  of  a  basket,  and  after  he 
had  been  munching  it  for  some  time,  he  said  :  "  After  all,  there 
is  no  country  in  the  world  where  such  good  bread  can  be  got 
as  this."     This  seemed  to  console  him  greatly. 

The  sunflower  season  had  arrived.  Sunflowers  used  to  be 
grown  in  great  quantities  in  Russia,  not  for  ornamental  but 
for  utilitarian  purposes.  They  were  grown  for  the  oil  that 
is  in  them  ;  but  besides  being  useful  in  many  ways  they 
formed  an  article  of  food.  You  pick  the  head  of  the  sun- 
flower and  eat  the  seeds.  You  bite  the  seed,  spit  out  the 
husk,  and  eat  the  kernel,  which  is  white  and  tastes  of  sun- 
flower. Considerable  skill  is  needed  when  cracking  the  husk 
and  spitting  it  out,  to  leave  the  kernel  intact.  This  habit  was 
universal  among  the  lower  classes  in  Russia.  It  occupies  a 
human  being  like  smoking,  and  it  is  a  pleasant  adjunct  to 
contemplation.  It  is  also  conducive  to  untidiness.  Nothing 
is  so  untidy  in  the  world  as  a  room  or  a  platform  littered  with 
sunflower  seeds.  All  platforms  in  Russia  were  thus  littered 
at  this  time  of  year.     When  I  was  on  the  steamer  at  Tzaritsin, 


382  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

one  of  the  Cossacks  approached  me  with  this  question,  which 
seemed  startling :  "  Do  you  chew  seeds  ?  "  At  first  I  was  at  a 
loss  to  think  what  he  meant,  but  I  soon  remembered  the  sun- 
flower, and  when  I  had  answered  in  the  affirmative,  he  produced 
a  great  handful  of  dried  seeds  and  offered  them  to  me.  When 
I  arrived  at  my  destination,  Sosnofka,  in  the  government  of 
Tambov,  I  found  the  country  looking  intensely  green  after  a 
wet  summer  ;  the  weather  was  hot,  and  the  nights  had  the 
softness  and  the  sweetness  that  should  belong  to  the  month 
of  June. 

I  found  a  large  crowd  at  the  station  gathered  round  a  pillar 
of  smoke  and  flame.  At  first  I  thought,  of  course,  that  a  village 
fire  was  going  on.  Fires  in  Russian  villages  were  common 
occurrences  in  the  summer,  and  this  was  not  surprising,  as 
the  majority  of  the  houses  were  thatched  with  straw.  The 
houses  were  so  close  one  to  another,  and  the  ground  was 
littered  with  straw.  Moreover,  to  set  fire  to  one's  neighbour's 
house  used  to  be  a  common  form  of  paying  off  a  score.  But  it 
was  not  a  fire  that  was  in  progress.  It  was  the  casting  of  a  bell. 
The  ceremony  was  fixed  for  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  with 
due  solemnity  and  with  religious  rites,  and  I  was  invited  to  be 

present. 

"  Heute  muss  die  Glocke  werden," 

wrote  Schiller  in  his  famous  poem,  and  here  the  words  were 
appropriate.  This  day  the  bell  was  to  be.  It  was  a  blazing 
hot  day.  The  air  was  dry,  the  ground  was  dry,  everything  was 
dry,  and  the  great  column  of  smoke  mixed  with  flame  issuing 
from  the  furnace  added  to  the  heat.  The  furnace  had  been 
made  exactly  opposite  to  the  church.  The  church  was  a 
stone  building  with  a  Doric  portico,  four  red  columns,  a 
white  pediment,  a  circular  pale  green  roof,  and  a  Byzantine 
minaret.  The  village  of  Sosnofka  had  wooden  log-built  cottages 
thatched  with  straw  dotted  over  the  rolling  plain.  The  plain 
was  variegated  with  woods — oak  trees  and  birch  being  the 
principal  trees — and  stretched  out  infinitely  into  the  blue 
distance.  Before  the  bell  was  to  be  cast  a  Te  Deum  was  to  be 
sung. 

It  was  Wednesday,  the  day  of  the  bazaar.  The  bazaar  in 
the  village  of  Somotka  was  the  mart,  where  the  buying  and 
selling  of  meat,  provisions,  fruit,  melons,  fish,  hardware,  iron- 
mongery, china,  and  books  were  conducted.     It  happened  once 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  383 

a  week  on  Wednesdays,  and   peasants  flocked  in  from  the 

neighbouring    villages    to    buy    their    provisions.     But    that 
afternoon  the  bazaar  was  deserted.     The  whole  population  of 
the  village  had  gathered  together  on  the  dry,  brown,  gni 
square  in  front  of  the  church  to  take  part   in  the  ceremony. 
At    four   o'clock  two    priests    and    a    deacon,    followed    by  a 
choir  (two  men   in   their    Sunday  clothes),  and  by  bearers  of 
gilt  banners,  walked   in   procession  out  of  the  church.     They 
were  dressed   in  stiff  robes  of   green   and    gold,  and  as  they 
walked  they  intoned  a  plain-song.     An  old  card-table,  with  a 
stained   green   cloth,  was   placed   and   opened   on   the  ground 
opposite,  and  not  far  from  the  church,  and  on  this  two  lighted 
tapers  were  set,   together  with  a  bowl  of   holy  water.     The 
peasants   gathered    round    in    a    semicircle   with   bare   head-, 
and  joined  in  the  service,  making  many  genuflexions  and  signs 
of  the  Cross,  and  joining  in  the  song  with  their  deep  bass  voices. 
When  I  said  the  peasants,  I  should  have  said  half  of  them. 
The  other  half  were   gathered  in   a  dense   crowd   round   the 
furnace,  which  was  built  of  bricks,  and  open  on  both  sides  to 
the  east  and   to  the  west,  and    fed  with   wooden   fuel.     The 
men  in  charge  of  the  furnace  stood  on  both  sides  of  it  and 
stirred  the  molten  metal  it  contained  with  two  enormous  poles. 
On  one  side  of  the  furnace  a  channel  had  been  prepared 
through    which    the    metal    was    to    flow    into    the    cast    of 
the  bell.     The  crowd  assembled  there  was  already  struggling 
to   have    and    to    hold    a    good    place    for    the    spectacle   of 
the   release  of   the   metal   when  the  solemn    moment    should 
arrive.     Three  policemen  tried   to   restrain  the  crowd  ;    that 
is   to   say,   one    police   officer,  one   police   sergeant,   and   one 
common   policeman.     They  were  trying  with   all  their  might 
to    keep    back    the    crowd,    so    that    when    the    metal    was 
released  a  disaster  should  not  happen  ;   but  their  efforts  were 
in  vain,  because  the  crowd  was  large,  and  when  they  pressed 
back  a  small  portion  of  it  they  made  a  dent  in  it  which  caused 
the  remaining  part  of  it  to  bulge  out  ;   and  it  was  the  kind  of 
crowd — so  intensely  typical  of   Russia — on   which   no  words, 
whether  of  command,  entreaty,  or  threat,  made  the  smallest 
impression.     The  only  way  to  keep  it  back  was  by  pressing  on 
it  with  the  body  and  outstretched  arms,  and  that  only  kept 
back  a  tiny  portion  of  it.     In  the  meantime  the  Te  Deum  went 
on  and  on  ;    and   many  things  and  persons  were  prayed  for 


384  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

besides  the  bell  which  was  about  to  be  born.  At  one  moment 
I  obtained  a  place  from  which  I  had  a  commanding  view  of 
the  furnace,  but  I  was  soon  oozed  out  of  it  by  the  ever-increasing 
crowd  of  men,  women,  and  children. 

The  whole  thing  was  something  between  a  sacred  picture 
and  a  scene  in  a  Wagner  opera.  The  tall  peasants  with  red 
shirts,  long  hair,  and  beards,  stirring  the  furnace  with  long 
poles,  looked  like  the  persons  in  the  epic  of  the  Niebelungen 
as  we  see  it  performed  on  the  stage  to  the  strains  of  a  com- 
plicated orchestration.  There  was  Wotan  in  a  blue  shirt,  with 
a  spear  ;  and  Alberic,  with  a  grimy  face  and  a  hammer,  was 
meddling  with  the  furnace  ;  and  Siegfried,  in  leather  boots 
and  sheepskin,  was  smoking  a  cigarette  and  waving  an  enormous 
hammer  ;  while  Mimi,  whining  and  disagreeable  as  usual,  was 
having  his  head  smacked.  On  the  other  hand,  the  peasants 
who  were  listening  and  taking  part  in  the  Te  Deum,  were  like 
the  figures  of  a  sacred  picture — women  with  red-and-white 
Eastern  head-dresses,  bearded  men  listening  as  though  expect- 
ing a  miracle,  and  barefooted  children,  with  straw-coloured 
hair  and  blue  eyes,  running  about  everywhere.  Towards  six 
o'clock  the  Te  Deum  at  last  came  to  an  end,  and  the  crowd 
moved  and  swayed  around  the  furnace.  The  Russian  crowd 
reminded  me  of  a  large  tough  sponge.  Nothing  seemed  to 
make  any  effect  on  it.  It  absorbed  the  newcomers  who 
dived  into  it,  and  you  could  pull  it  this  way  and  press  it 
that  way,  but  there  it  remained ;  indissoluble,  passive,  and 
obstinate.  Perhaps  the  same  is  true  of  the  Russian  nation  ; 
I  think  it  is  certainly  true  of  the  Russian  character,  in 
which  there  is  so  much  apparent  weakness  and  softness, 
so  much  obvious  elasticity  and  malleability,  and  so  much 
hidden  passive  resistance. 

I  asked  a  peasant  who  was  sitting  by  a  railing  under  the 
church  when  the  ceremony  would  begin.  "  Ask  them,"  he 
answered  ;  "  they  will  tell  you,  but  they  won't  tell  us."  With 
the  help  of  the  policeman,  I  managed  to  squeeze  a  way  through 
the  mass  of  struggling  humanity  to  a  place  in  the  first  row. 
I  was  told  that  the  critical  moment  was  approaching,  and  was 
asked  to  throw  a  piece  of  silver  into  the  furnace,  so  that  the 
bell  might  have  a  tuneful  sound.  I  threw  a  silver  rouble  into 
the  furnace,  and  the  men  who  were  in  charge  of  the  casting 
said  that  the  critical  moment  had  come.     On  each  side  of  the 


TRAVEL  IN  RUSSIA  385 

small  channel  they  fixed  metal  screens  and  placed  a  large 
screen  facing  it.  The  man  in  charge  said  in  a  loud,  matter- 
of-fact  tone  :  '  Now,  let  us  pray  to  God."  The  peasants 
uncovered  themselves  and  made  the  sign  of  the  Cross.  A 
moment  was  spent  in  silent  prayer.  This  prayer  was  especially 
for  the  success  of  the  operation  which  was  to  take  place  im- 
mediately, namely,  the  re]  of  the  molten  metal.  Two 
hours  had  already  been  spent  in  praying  for  the  bell.  At  this 
moment  the  excitement  of  the  crowd  reached  such  a  pitch 
that  they  pushed  themselves  right  up  to  the  channel,  and  the 
efforts  of  the  policemen,  who  were  pouring  down  with  perspiia- 
tion,  and  stretching  out  in  vain  their  futile  arms,  like  the  ghosts 
in  Virgil,  were  pathetic.  One  man,  however,  not  a  police- 
man, waved  a  big  stick  and  threatened  to  beat  everybody 
back  if  they  did  not  make  way.  Then,  at  last,  the  culminating 
moment  came  ;  the  metal  was  released,  and  it  poured  down 
the  narrow  channel  which  had  been  prepared  for  it,  and  over 
which  two  logs  placed  crosswise  formed  an  arch,  surmounted 
by  a  yachting  cap,  for  ornament.  A  huge  yellow  sheet  of  flame 
flared  up  for  a  moment  in  front  of  the  iron  screen  facing  the 
channel.  The  women  in  the  crowd  shrieked.  Those  who  were 
in  front  made  a  desperate  effort  to  get  back,  and  those  who 
were  at  the  back  made  a  desperate  effort  to  get  forward, 
and  I  was  carried  right  through  and  beyond  the  crowd  in 
the  struggle. 

The  bell  was  born.  I  hoped  the  silver  rouble  which  I 
threw  into  it,  and  which  now  formed  a  part  of  it,  would  sweeten 
its  utterance,  and  that  it  might  never  have  to  sound  the  alarm 
which  signifies  battle,  murder,  and  sudden  death.  A  vain 
hope- -an  idle  wish. 


25 


CHAPTER    XX 
SOUTH  RUSSIA,  JOURNALISM,  LONDON 

IN  the  autumn  of  1907  I  went  for  the  first  time  to  South 
Russia.  To  Kharkov,  and  then  to  Gievko,  a  small 
village  in  the  neighbourhood,  where  I  stayed  with  Prince 
Mirski  in  his  country  house. 

This  was  the  first  time  I  had  visited  Little  Russia,  that  is 
to  say,  Southern  Russia.  The  contrast  between  Central  and 
Southern  Russia  is,  I  noted  at  the  time,  not  unlike  that 
between  Cambridgeshire  and  South  Devon. 

The  vegetation  was  more  or  less  the  same  in  both  places, 
and  in  both  places  the  season  was  marking  the  same  hour,  only 
the  hour  was  being  struck  in  a  different  manner.  In  Central 
Russia  there  was  a  bite  in  the  morning  air,  a  smell  of  smoke, 
of  damp  leaves,  of  moist  brown  earth,  and  a  haze  hanging 
on  the  tattered  trees,  which  were  generously  splashed  with 
crimson  and  gold.  In  the  south  of  Russia,  little  green  remained 
in  the  yellow  and  golden  woods  ;  the  landscape  was  hot  and 
dry  ;  there  was  no  sharpness  in  the  air  and  no  moisture  in  the 
earth  ;  summer,  instead  of  being  conquered  by  the  sharp  wounds 
of  the  invading  cold,  was  dying  like  a  decadent  Roman  Emperor 
of  excess  of  splendour,  softness,  and  opulence.  The  contrast 
in  the  houses  was  sharper  still.  In  Central  Russia  the  peasant's 
house  is  built  of  logs  and  roofed  with  straw  or  iron  according 
to  the  means  of  the  inhabitant.  The  villages  are  brown,  colour- 
less, and  sullen ;  in  the  South  the  houses  are  white  or  pale 
green  ;  they  have  orchards  and  fruit  trees,  and  sometimes  a 
glass  verandah.  There  is  something  well-to-do  and  smiling 
about  them — something  which  reminds  one  of  the  white- 
washed cottages  of  South  Devon  or  the  farms  in  Normandy. 

Prince  Mirski  lived  in  a  long,  low  house,  which  gave  one  the 

impression  of  a  dignified,  comfortable,  and  slightly  shabby  Grand 

Trianon.     The  walls  were  grey,  the  windows  went  down  to  the 

386 


SOUTH  RUSSIA,  JOURNALISM,  LONDON        387 

ground,  and  opened  on  to  a  delightful  view.  You  looked  down 
a  broad  avenue  of  golden  trees,  which  framed  a  distant  hill 
in  front  of  you,  sloping  down  to  a  silver  sheet  of  water.  In  the 
middle  of  this  brown  hill  there  was  a  church  painted  white,  with 
a  cupola  and  a  spire  on  one  side  of  it,  and  flanked  on  both  sides 
by  two  tall  cypresses.  There  were  many  guests  in  the  house  : 
relations,  friends,  neighbours.  We  met  at  luncheon — a  large, 
patriarchal  meal — and  after  luncheon,  Prince  Mirski  used  to 
play  Vindt  in  the  room  looking  down  on  to  the  view  I  have 
described.  Prince  Mirski  had  been  Minister  of  the  Interior 
for  a  short  period  in  the  autumn  of  1905,  and  during  hia 
period  of  office  he  had  abolished  all  censorship  of  newspapers 
previous  to  their  publication.  This  act,  which  would  not 
seem  at  first  sight  to  be  momentous,  had  far-reaching  effects. 
Never  could  this  censorship  be  restored  again,  and  its  removal 
let  in  a  flood  of  light  to  Russian  life.  It  was  the  opening 
of  a  small  skylight  into  a  darkened  room.  After  that 
nothing  could  ever  be  as  it  had  been  before.  Prince  Mirski 
was  a  warm-hearted,  welcoming  host,  and  spoke  a  beautiful 
easy  Russian,  and  his  great,  saltlike  good  sense  pervaded  the 
light  rippling  waves,  or  the  lambent  shafts  of  an  urbane  wit, 
never  heavy,  never  tedious,  never  lengthy,  but  always  light, 
always  amiable,  and  yet  never  divorced  from  a  strong  funda- 
mental reasonableness.  I  was  taken  to  see  the  little  Russian 
farms,  which  were  painted  green,  and  were  as  clean  outside  as 
they  were  inside.  Inside,  the  walls  were  painted  red  and  blue, 
the  furniture  was  neatly  arranged,  and  no  hens  nor  other 
live-stock  shared  the  living-rooms.  The  inhabitants  wore 
no  gorgeously  picturesque  South  Russian  costumes.  There 
were  factories  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  this  was  perhaps 
the  reason  an  air  of  Manchester  and  Birmingham  had 
invaded  the  fashions.  The  shirt  and  the  collars  of  the  in- 
telligentsia had  spread  downwards  to  the  peasant  population, 
but  every  now  and  then  one  came  across  a  picturesque 
figure. 

One  day  I  met  a  blind  beggar.  He  was  sitting  on  a  hill  in 
front  of  the  church,  and  he  was  playing  an  instrument  called  a 
"  lira,"  that  is  to  say,  a  lyre. 

It  was  a  wooden  instrument  shaped  exactly  like  a  violin 
It  had  three  strings,  which  were  tuned  with  pegs,  like  those  of  a 
violin,  but  it  was  played  by  fingering  wooden  keys,  like  those  of 


388  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

a  large  concertina,  and  by,  at  the  same  time,  turning  a  handle 
which  protruded  from  the  base  of  the  instrument.  The  musician 
said  he  could  play  any  kind  of  music — sad,  joyous,  and  sacred, 
and  he  gave  examples  of  all  three  of  these  styles  ;  they  were  to 
my  ear  indistinguishable  in  kind  ;  they  seemed  to  me  all  tinged 
with  the  same  quick  and  deliciously  plaintive  melody ;  and  the 
sound  made  by  the  instrument  instantly  suggested  the  melody 
and  the  accompaniment  of  Schubert's  song :  "  Der  Leiermann  "  ; 
the  plaintive,  comfortable  noise  of  the  first  hurdy-gurdy 
players.  I  found  out  afterwards  this  lyre  was  indeed  the  same 
instrument  as  Schubert  must  have  had  in  his  mind.  It  was 
the  instrument  that  in  Germany  is  called  Leierkasten,  in  France 
vielle,  and  in  England,  hurdy-gurdy ;  and  my  blind  beggar  was 
just  such  a  man  as  Schubert's  Leiermann. 

After  I  had  stayed  some  days  at  Gievko,  I  went  farther 
south  to  Kiev,  and  stayed  at  Smielo  with  Count  Andre  Bobrin- 
sky.  Count  Bobrinsky  lived  in  a  compound  next  to  a  large 
beet -sugar  factory.  In  the  same  compound  various  members 
of  the  same  family  lived.  Each  member  of  the  family  had  a 
house  of  his  own,  and  the  whole  clan  were  presided  over  and 
ruled  by  an  old  Count  Lev  Bobrinsky. 

Count  Lev  Bobrinsky  was  an  old  man  of  astonishing  vigour 
and  activity,  both  of  body  and  mind.  He  knew  every  detail 
of  all  the  affairs  that  were  going  on  around  him.  He  was 
afraid  of  nothing,  and  once  when  he  was  attacked  by  a  huge 
hound  he  tackled  and  defeated  the  infuriated  beast  with  his 
hands,  and  broke  the  animal's  jaw. 

All  his  family  held  him  in  wholesome  respect  not  unmixed 
with  awe. 

One  day  we  went  out  shooting.  Count  Lev  no  longer  shot 
himself,  but  he  organised  every  detail  of  the  day's  sport,  and 
would  come  out  to  luncheon.  We  drove  in  a  four-in-hand 
harnessed  to  a  light  vehicle  to  the  woods,  which  were  most 
beautiful.  The  trees  had  huge  red  stems.  We  were  to  shoot 
roebuck  with  rifles.  I  was  specially  told  not  to  shoot  a  doe. 
While  I  was  waiting  there  was  a  rustle  in  the  undergrowth 
and  a  shout  from  someone,  which  meant  don't  shoot,  but  which  I 
interpreted  to  mean  shoot,  and  I  let  off  my  rifle.  It  was  a  doe. 
The  whole  party  were  agreed  that  Count  Lev  was  not  to  be  told. 
In  the  evening  I  was  taken  to  his  office  to  see  him.  It  was  a 
little  pitch-pine  house  full  of  rifles,  boots  and  ledgers,  and 


SOUTH  RUSSIA,  JOURNALISM,  LONDON        389 

walking-sticks.  He  eemed  to  have  about  a  hundred  walking- 
sticks  and  two  hundred  pail  -  of  boots.  1  [e  went  over  the  events 
of  the  day.  With  me  was  one  <»f  the  neighbours,  who  had 
also  been  one  of  t  he  guns,  a  Prince  Yashville. 

Count  Lev  went  through  the  bag  and  the  number  of  shots 
fired,  and  just  when  he  was  going  to  ask  me  if  1  had  fired,  Prince 
Yashville  intervened,  and  said  that  I  had  not  had  a  shot,  and  I 
by  my  silence  gave  consent  to  this  statement.  The  next  day 
I  left  for  the  north,  but  on  the  following  Sunday,  the  whole  clan 
of  Bobrinsky  family  met  as  usual  at  tea,  and  when  Count  Lev 
came  in  the  first  thing  he  said  was  :  "  It  is  an  odd  thing  that 
people  can't  tell  the  truth.  Mr.  Baring  said  he  had  not  had  a 
shot  out  shooting,  and  one  of  the  barrels  of  his  gun  was  dirty." 
Then  it  was  explained  to  him  that  I  had  shot  at  a  doe. 
I  felt  I  could  never  go  back  there  again. 
Near  Smielo  there  was  a  village  which  was  almost  entirely 
inhabited  by  Jews. 

It  was  from  this  village,  one  day,  that  two  Jews  came  to 
Countess  Bobrinsky  and  asked  if  they  might  store  their  fur- 
niture and  their  books  in  her  stables  .  .  .  they  would  not 
take  up  much  room.  WTien  Countess  Bobrinsky  asked  them 
why,  they  said  a  pogrom  had  been  arranged  for  the  next  day. 
Countess  Bobrinsky  was  bewildered,  and  asked  them  what  they 
meant,  and  who  was  going  to  make  this  pogrom.  The  two 
Jews  said  :  They  were  coming  from  Kiev  by  train,  and  from 
another  town.  The  pogrom  would  take  place  in  the  morning 
and  they  would  go  back  in  the  evening. 

When  she  asked  :  ' '  Who  are  they  ?  "  she  could  get  no  answer, 
except  that  some  said  it  was  the  Tsar's  orders,  some  that  it 
was  the  Governor's  orders,  but  they  had  been  sent  to  make  a 
pogrom. 

Countess  Bobrinsky  told  them  to  go  to  the  police,  but  the 
Jews  said  it  could  not  be  prevented,  and  that  all  had  been 
arranged  for  the  morrow.  Both  Count  and  Countess  Bobrin>kv 
then  made  inquiries,  but  all  the  answer  that  they  could  get  was 
that  a  pogrom  had  been  arranged  for  the  next  day.  It  was  not 
the  people  of  the  place  who  would  make  it  ;  these  lived  in 
peace  with  the  Jews.  They  would  come  by  the  night  train 
from  two  neighbouring  towns  ;  they  would  arrive  in  the  morn- 
ing; there  would  be  a  pogrom,  and  then  (key  would  go  away, 
and  all  the  next  morning  carts  would  arrive  from  the  neigh- 


390  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

bouring  villages,  just  as  when  there  was  a  fair,  to  take  away 
what  was  left  after  the  pogrom.  When  they  asked  who  was 
Bending  the  pogrom-makers  they  could  get  no  answer.  Count 
Bobrinsky  interviewed  the  local  police  sergeant,  but  all  he  did 
was  to  shrug  his  shoulders  and  wring  his  hands,  and  ask  what 
could  two  policemen  do  against  a  multitude  ?  if  there  was  to 
be  a  pogrom,  there  would  be  a  pogrom.  He  could  do  nothing ; 
nothing  could  be  done ;  nobody  could  do  anything. 

The  next  morning  the  peasant  cook,  a  woman,  came  into 
Countess  Bobrinsky's  room,  and  said  :  "  There  will  be  no 
pogrom  after  all.     It  has  been  put  off." 

I  stayed  in  Russia  all  that  autumn  and  winter,  and  I  saw 
the  opening  of  the  third  Duma,  and  arrived  in  London  in  the 
middle  of  December.  I  was  no  longer  correspondent  in  St. 
Petersburg,  but  I  worked  in  London  at  journalism,  and  in  the 
summer  of  1908,  together  with  Hilary  Belloc,  I  edited  and 
printed  a  newspaper,  which  had  only  one  number,  called  The 
North  Street  Gazette.  The  newspaper  was  printed  at  a  press 
which  we  had  bought  and  established  in  my  house,  No.  6  North 
Street — a  picturesque  house  behind  the  other  houses  in  North 
Street,  which  possessed  a  courtyard,  a  fig-tree,  and  an  under- 
ground passage  leading  to  Westminster  Abbey. 

The  newspaper  was  written  entirely  by  Belloc,  myself,  and 
Raymond  Asquith,  who  wrote  the  correspondence. 

It  was  to  be  supported  by  subscribers.  We  received  quite 
a  number  of  subscriptions,  but  we  never  brought  out  a  second 
number,  and  we  returned  the  cheques  to  the  subscribers. 

The  North  Street  Gazette  had  the  following  epigraph  :  "  Out, 
out,  brief  scandal  !  "  and  opened  with  the  following  statement  of 
aims  and  policy : 

"  The  North  Street  Gazette  is  a  journal  written  for 
the  rich  by  the  poor. 

"  The  North  Street  Gazette  will  be  printed  and 
published  by  the  proprietors  at  and  from  6  North  Street, 
Smith  Square,  Westminster,  London,  S.W.  This,  the 
first  number,  appears  upon  the  date  which  it  bears  ;  sub- 
sequent numbers  will  appear  whenever  the  proprietors 
are  in  possession  of  sufficient  matter,  literary  and  artistic, 
or  even  advertisement,  to  fill  its  columns.  No  price  is 
attached  to  the  sheet,  but  a  subscription  of  one  guinea 
will  entitle  a  subscriber  to  receive  no  less  than  twenty 
copies,  each  differing  from  the  last.     These  twenty  copies 


SOUTH  RUSSIA,  JOURNALISM,  LONDON        391 

delivered,  none  will  be  sent  to  any  subscriber  until  his  next 
subscription  is  paid. 

"  The  North  Street  Gazette  will  fearlessly  expose 
all  public  scandals  save  those  which  happen  to  be  lucrative 
to  the  proprietors,  or  whose  exposure  might  in  some  way 
damage  them  or  their  more  intimate  friends. 

"  The  services  of  a  competent  artist  have  been  pro- 
visionally acquired,  a  staff  of  prose  writers,  limited  but 
efficient,  is  at  the  service  of  the  paper  ;  three  poets  of 
fecundity  and  skill  have  also  been  hired.  Specimens  of 
all  three  classes  of  work  will  be  discovered  in  this  initial 
number. 

"  A  speciality  of  the  newspaper  will  be  that  the  Russian 
correspondence  will  be  written  in  Russian,  and  the  English 
in  English. 

"  All  communications  (which  should  be  written  on  one 
side  of  the  paper  only)  will  be  received  with  consideration, 
and  those  accompanied  by  stamps  will  be  confiscated." 

Then  followed  a  leading  article  composed  entirely  of  cliches  ; 
a  long  article  advocating  votes  for  monkeys,  written  by  Belloc 
and  afterwards  republished  by  him  ;  "  Society  Notes  "  ;  a  "City 
Letter  "  ;  and  a  poem  by  Belloc,  called  "  East  and  West,"  parts 
of  which,  but  not  the  whole  of  it,  are  to  be  found  in  his  book 
The  Four  Men. 

The  version  I  print  here  is  the  original  form  of  this  spirited 
lyric  : 

"EAST  AND  WEST 

"  The  dog  is  a  faithful,  intelligent  friend, 
But  his  hide  is  covered  with  hair. 
The  cat  will  inhabit  a  house  to  the  end, 
But  her  hide  is  covered  with  hair. 

The  camel  excels  in  a  number  of  ways. 
The  Arab  accords  him  continual  praise. 
He  can  go  without  drinking  for  several  days — 
But  his  hide  is  covered  with  hair. 

Chorus  : 
Oh  !    I  thank  my  God  for  this  at  the  least, 
1  was  born  in  the  west  and  not  in  the  east  ! 
And  he  made  me  a  human  instead  of  a  beast : 
Whose  Hide  is  Covered  with  Hair. 

The  cow  in  the  pasture  that  chews  the  cud, 

Her  hide  is  covered  with  hair, 
And  even  a  horse  of  the  Barbary  blood 

His  hide  is  covered  with  hair. 


392  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

The  hide  of  the  mammoth  is  covered  with  wool. 
The  hide  of  the  porpoise  is  sleek  and  cool, 
But  you  find  if  you  look  at  that  gambolling  fool — 
That  his  hide  is  covered  with  hair. 

The  lion  is  full  of  legitimate  pride, 

But  his  hide  is  covered  with  hair  ; 
The  poodle  is  perfect  except  for  his  hide 

(Which  is  partially  covered  with  hair). 

When  I  come  to  consider  the  Barbary  ape, 
Or  the  African  lynx,  which  is  found  at  the  Cape. 
Or  the  tiger,  in  spite  of  his  elegant  shape, 
His  hide  is  covered  with  hair. 

The  men  that  sit  on  the  Treasury  Bench, 
Their  hide  is  covered  with  hair, 
Etc.  etc.  etc. 

Chorus  : 
Oh  1    I  thank  my  God  for  this  at  the  least, 
I  was  born  in  the  west  and  not  in  the  east ! 
And  he  made  me  a  human  instead  of  a  beast : 
Whose  Hide  is  Covered  with  Hair." 

Then  came  a  city  letter,  an  account  of  a  debate  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  some  book  reviews. 
This  was  the  review  of  Hamlet : 

"  The  number  of  writers  who  aspire  to  poetic  drama 
is  becoming  legion  ;  Mr.  William  Shakespeare's  effort — not 
his  first  attempt  in  that  kind — is  better  in  some  ways  than 
some  others  which  we  recently  noticed.  We  regret, 
therefore,  all  the  more  that  the  dominant  motive  of  his 
drama  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  deal  with  it. 

"  Mr.  Shakespeare  has  taken  his  subject  from  the 
history  of  Denmark,  and  in  his  play  King  Claudius  is 
represented  as  murdering  his  brother  and  marrying  Queen 
Gertrude,  his  deceased  brother's  wife.  There  was  a  King 
Claude  (whether  there  has  been  an  intentional  change 
of  name  we  do  not  know)  who  succeeded  his  brother  Olaf  II. 
We  hear  a  good  deal  about  him,  his  parentage,  and  life  at 
court.  That  he  was  intemperate  and  hasty — he  was 
known  to  exceed  at  meals,  and  on  one  occasion  he  boxed 
the  Lord  Chamberlain's  ears — need  hardly  be  said.  But 
there  is  nowhere  we  can  discover  a  hint  of  the  monstrous 
wickedness  Mr.  Shakespeare  has  attributed  to  him.  Were 
this  vile  relationship  (i.e.  the  King's  marriage  with  his 
murdered  brother's  wife)  a  fact,  it  might  fairly  be  a  theme 


SOUTH  RUSSIA,  JOURNALISM,  LONDON  393 

for  the  dramatist  to  deal  with  ;  but  we  rep  a1  we  certainly 
do  not  care  to  criticise  the  drama  in  which  it  is  treated. 
'We  regret  this,  because  we  see  onmistakabL 

of  power  in  Mr.  Shakespea  I  [e  b  is  .1  real  instinct 

for  blank  verse  of  the  robustious  kind,  and  the  true  lyrii 

cry  is  to  be  found  in  the  of  his  play,  although  they 

are  too  often  marred  by  deplorable  torn  lies  of  coarsen  1 

"  He  will,  we  supp  _;ard  us  as  fusty  old-fashioned 

critics  for  the  line  we  have  taken  ;  but,  trusting  to  the 
promise  which  we  think  we  discern  in  Mr.  Shakespean-, 
it  is  by  no  means  unlikely  that  in  ten  years'  time  he  will 
be  the  first  to  regret  his  extravagance  and  to  applaud 
our  disapproval. 

"  At  any  rate,  although  we  must  speak  frankly  of  sin  h 
a  plot  as  Hamlet,  we  have  not  the  slightest  desire  wholly 
to  condemn  Mr.  Shakespeare  as  a  poet  because  he  has 
written  a  play  on  an  unpleasant  theme. 

"  If  he  turns  his  undoubted  poetic  gifts  to  what  is  sane 
and  manly  we  shall  be  the  first  to  welcome  him  among 
the  freemasonry  of  poets.  At  the  same  time  we  should 
like  to  remind  him  that  speeches  do  not  make  a  play, 
and  that  his  dialogue,  halting  somewhere  between  what 
is  readable  and  what  is  actable,  loses  the  amplitude  of 
narrative  without  achieving  the  force  of  drama." 

The  newspaper  ended  with  a  sonnet  written  in  the  House 
of  Commons  by  Belloc,  and  by  a  correspondence  column 
written  by  Raymond  Asquith — both  of  which  items  I  trans- 
cribe. This  correspondence  is,  I  think,  the  most  brilliant  of 
Raymond  Asquith's  ephemera. 

"  SONNET  WRITTEN  IN  DEJECTION  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF 

COMMONS. 
"  Good  God,  the  boredom  !     Oh,  my  Lord  in  Heaven, 
Strong  Lord  of  Life,  the  nothingness  and   void 
Of  Percy  Gattock,  Henry  Murgatroyed, 
Lord  Arthur  Fenton,  and  Sir  Philip  Bevan, 

And   Mr.   Palace  !     It  is  nearly  seven  ; 

My  head's  a  buzz,  my  soul  is  clammed  and  cloyed, 
My  stomach's  sick  ami  all   myself 's  annoyed 

Nor  any  breath  of  truth  such  lees  to  leaven. 

No  question,  issue,  principle,  or  rij^ht  ; 
No  wit,  no  argument,   nor  no  disdain  : 
No  hearty  quarrel  :  morning,  noon,  and   night 

The  old,  dead,  vulgar  fossil  drags  its  train  ; 

The  while  three  journalists  an d    twenty   Jews 
Do  with  the  country  anything   they  choose." 


394  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

"  To  the  Editor  of  The  North  Street  Gazette 
Mr.  Gladstone's  Diction 

"  Sir, — Mr.  Tollemache's  letter  (in  which  he  shows  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  invented  the  phrase  '  bag  and  baggage  ') 
has  suggested  to  me  the  following  reminiscences.  I  was 
the  humble  means  of  bringing  together  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
the  late  Mr.  Cheadle  ffrench  (at  a  breakfast -party  which 
I  gave  at  Frascati's  in  1876).  I  remember  that  Mr. 
Gladstone  turned  to  me  towards  the  close  of  the  meal,  and 
remarked  in  his  always  impressive  manner,  '  We  shall  hear 
more  of  that  young  man.'  The  prediction  was  never 
fulfilled  (though  Mr.  ffrench  was  about  to  become  a  J. P. 
when  he  died  so  suddenly  two  years  ago),  but  the  anecdote 
is  worthy  of  record  as  illustrating  the  origin  of  another 
phrase  which  has  since  passed  into  popular  parlance.  On 
a  different  occasion  I  recollect  Mr.  Gladstone  (who  was  a 
good  French  scholar)  employing  the  (now  familiar)  expres- 
sion '  Dieu  et  Mon  Droit.'  I  also  had  the  honour  to  be 
present  when  Mazzini  altered  the  famous  epigram  (after- 
wards remembered  and  quoted  against  him)  '  non  vero 
ma  ben  trovato.'  I  remember  too  the  pleasure  which  was 
caused  by  another  gentleman  present  (who  shall  be  name- 
less) neatly  capping  it  with  the  expression  '  Trocadero.' 
But  those  were  indeed  '  noctes  cenoeque  deum  !  '  I  re- 
collect telling  this  story  to  Jowett.  He  replied  by  asking 
me  in  his  curious  high  voice  whether  I  had  read  his 
translation  of  Thucydides.  I  confessed  somewhat  shame- 
facedly that  I  had  not,  and  I  remember  that  he  made  no 
reply  at  all  (either  then  or  afterwards),  but  remained 
perfectly  silent  for  three  days  (from  Saturday  to  Monday). 
It  was  characteristic  of  the  man. — Yours,  etc., 

"  Lionel  Bellmash. 

"  (All  this  is  very  interesting,  and  proves  what  we  have 
always  asserted,  that  wit  as  well  as  honesty  and  logic  is 
on  the  side  of  the  Free  Trader. — Editor,  The  North  Street 
Gazette.)" 

"  Coincidences 

"  Sir, — The  following  may  not  be  without  interest 
to  those  of  your  readers  who  care  for  natural  history. 
Yesterday  as  I  was  walking  home  from  the  city,  I  noticed 
a  large  flock  of  flamingoes  {Phcenicopterus  ingens)  hover- 
ing over  Shaftesbury  Avenue.  This  was  at  6.17  p.m. 
On  reaching  home  I  went  up  to  dress  to  my  own  room, 
which  communicates  with   my  wife's   by  a  stained  oak 


SOUTH  RUSSIA,  JOURNALISM,  LONDON  395 

door.  Judge  of  my  surprise  to  find  it  tenanted  by  a 
giraffe  (Tragelaphus  Asiaticus).  Surely  the  coincidence 
is  a  remarkable  one. 

"  The  only  analogy  which  occurs  to  me  at  this 
moment  (and  that  an  imperfect  one)  is  a  story  which 
my  father  used  to  tell,  of  how  he  was  one  day  driving 
down  Threadnecdle  Street  and  observed  a  middle-aged 
man  of  foreign  appearance  standing  under  a  lamp-post 
and  apparently  engaged  in  threading  a  needle  !  On  inquiry 
he  discovered  that  the  man's  name  was  Street  ! — Yours, 

etc.,  FOXHUNTER. 

"  P.S. — It  is  only  fair  to  mention  that  the  man  was  not 
really  threading  a  needle,  but,  as  it  afterwards  turned 
out,  playing  upon  a  barrel-organ.  My  father's  mistake 
was  due  to  his  defective  vision.  But  this  does  not  affect 
the  point  of  the  story. 

"  (Our  correspondent's  letter  is  both  frank  and 
manly ;  and  we  shall  be  interested  to  know  whether 
any  of  our  other  readers  have  had  similar  experiences.)  " 

The  North  Street  Gazette  died  after  its  first  number,  but 
it  was  perhaps  the  indirect  begetter  of  another  newspaper, 
that  had  a  longer  life,  The  Eye  Witness,  which  in  its  turn  begat 
The  New  Witness. 

The  Eye  Witness  was  edited  at  first  by  Belloc,  and  then 
by  Cecil  Chesterton.  Cecil  Chesterton  edited  The  New  Witness 
until  he  went  as  a  private  soldier  to  France  to  fight  in  the 
war  and  to  die.  The  editorship  was  then  taken  over  by  his 
brother  Gilbert. 

During  the  next  years,  until  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  my  life 
was  divided  between  journalistic  work  in  London  and  long 
sojourns  in  Russia ;  while  I  was  in  Russia  I  wrote  books  on 
Russian  matters,  literary  and  political.  During  this  period 
I  went  twice  to  Turkey — once  for  the  Morning  Post,  to  seethe 
Turkish  Revolution  in  May  1909 ;  and  once  for  the  Times,  to 
try  and  see  something  of  the  Balkan  War  in  1912.  Early  in 
1912  I  went  round  the  world.  On  three  separate  occasions 
I  went  for  a  cruise  in  a  man-of-war.  One  of  these  cruises — in 
December  1908,  when  I  went  as  the  guest  of  Commander  Fisher 
on  board  the  Indomitable — lasted  for  several  weeks,  and  I  was 
privileged  during  this  visit  to  see  a  sight  of  thrilling  interest — 
gun-layer's  test  and  battle  practice  in  Aranci  Bay. 

On    the  eve  of  Candlemas  1909,  I  was  received  into  the 


396  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Catholic  Church  by  Father  Sebastian  Bowden  at  the  Brompton 
Oratory  :  the  only  action  in  my  life  which  I  am  quite  certain 
I  have  never  regretted.  Father  Sebastian  began  life  as  an 
officer  in  the  Scots  Guards.  He  had  served  as  A.D.C.  under 
the  same  chief  and  at  the  same  time  as  my  uncle,  Lord  Cromer. 
He  lived  all  the  rest  of  his  life  at  the  Oratory  and  died  in  1920. 
He  was  fond  even  in  old  age  of  riding  about  London  on  a  cob. 
His  face  was  stamped  with  the  victory  of  character  over  all 
other  elements.  He  was  a  sensible  Conservative,  a  patriot,  a 
fine  example  of  an  English  gentleman  in  mind  and  appearance  ; 
a  prince  of  courtesy,  and  a  saint  ;  and  I  regard  my  acquaint- 
ance with  him  and  the  friendship  and  sympathy  he  gave  me 
as  the  greatest  privilege  bestowed  on  me  by  Providence. 


CHAPTER    XXI 

CONSTANTINOPLE 

(1909) 

I  ARRIVED  at  Constantinople  in  May  1909,  on  the  same 
day  that  the  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid  left  the  city.  A 
revolution  had  just  occurred.  The  Young  Turk  party 
had  dethroned  the  Sultan.  The  revolution  was  a  military 
one. 

When  I  arrived,  the  surface  life  of  Constantinople  was 
unchanged.  The  only  traces  of  the  crisis  were  a  few  marks,  and 
some  slight  damage  done  by  shells  and  bullets  on  the  walls 
of  the  houses.  The  streets  were  crowded  with  soldiers.  The 
tram-cars  and  the  cabs  were  full  of  dusty  men,  stained  with  the 
marks  of  campaigning  :  Albanians  with  rifles  slung  across  their 
shoulders,  Macedonian  gendarmes  in  light  blue  uniforms.  The 
mosques  were  crowded  with  soldiers.  Shots  were  sometimes 
heard,  but  none  of  the  soldiery  except  the  marines  gave 
any  trouble. 

I  lived  at  the  Little  Club  at  Pera.  My  bedroom  looked 
out  on  to  the  Golden  Horn.  In  the  foreground  were  dark 
cypresses.  Across  the  water  I  could  see  Stamboul,  soft  as  a 
soap-bubble  in  the  haze,  milky-white  and  filmy  with  a  hundred 
faint  rainbow  hues.  The  Club  was  a  centre  of  gossip  and  mild 
gambling.  Enver  Pasha  used  to  frequent  it,  and  one  evening 
a  man  called  Assiz  Bey  walked  in  to  play  cards,  with  a  piece 
of  a  rope  which  had  just  served  to  hang  a  man. 

I  attended  the  Selamlik  of  the  new  Sultan.     It  was  a  casual 

ceremony.     Most  of  the  troops  were  drawn  up  in  places  where 

it  was  impossible  for  the  Sultan  to  pass,  and  up  to  the  last 

all  were  in  doubt  as  to  what  the  Sultan's  route  would  be.     At 

the  last   minute   the  whole   cortege  was   stopped   by  a   large 

hay  wagon  which  leisurely  took  its  way  along  the  road  which 

had  been  cleared  for  the  Sultan.     In  Stamboul  thebrighto-t 

397 


398  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

of  crowds  swarmed — men  and  women  of  every  colour,  dressed 
in  all  colours,  chirruping  like  sparrows,  hanging  out  of 
wooden  balconies  beside  broken  Byzantine  arches,  where  one 
caught  sight  of  trailing  wistaria  and  sometimes  of  a  Judas  tree 
in  blossom.  The  Sultan  had  no  military  escort  and  only  one 
sais,  dressed  in  blue  and  gold,  as  an  outrider.  There  was  no 
pomp  about  the  ceremony,  which  passed  off  well.  The  Turkish 
Parliament  was  sitting  not  a  stone's  throw  from  St.  Sophia, 
and  not  far  from  the  site  where  Justinian's  Palace  once  stood. 
The  crowd  wandered  and  lolled  about,  smoking  cigarettes  by 
the  gates  of  the  Parliament ;  the  fickle,  opportunist,  supple- 
minded,  picturesque  crowd  of  Stamboul,  was,  I  think,  akin  to 
that  which  fought  for  the  "  Blues  "  or  the  "  Greens  "  in  the 
days  of  Justinian  and  Theodora. 

One  night,  I  was  invited  to  meet  the  leading  men  of  the 
Young  Turk  party,  Talaat  Bey  and  others.  They  all  drank 
water  at  the  meal,  but  before  the  meal  began,  we  were  all 
offered  a  stiff  glass  of  whisky  to  show  that  the  new  Government 
had  discarded  the  old-fashioned  Mohammedan  principles.  But 
though  the  hosts  drank  the  whisky  they  did  not  appear  to 
enjoy  it. 

The  heat  at  Constantinople,  and  the  atmosphere  of  the 
place,  sapped  one's  energy.  The  manifold  activities  of  the 
human  machine  seemed  to  exhaust  themselves  in  the  acts 
of  drinking  coffee  and  in  having  one's  boots  cleaned.  You 
had  your  boots  finished  off  out  of  doors  after  they  had  been 
preliminarily  cleaned  indoors.  You  sat  on  a  chair  and  a  man 
in  a  shirt  and  a  fez,  rubbed  them,  waxed  them,  greased  them, 
kneaded  them  with  his  bare  hand,  brushed  them,  dusted  them, 
polished  them  with  a  silk  handkerchief,  and  painted  the  edges 
of  them  with  a  spirit.  And  during  this  process  you  looked  on 
at  the  shifting  crowd,  sipped  your  coffee,  and  thought  long 
thoughts  which  led  nowhere. 

One  morning  streams  of  people  were  walking  briskly  from 
Pera  to  Stamboul,  in  the  same  direction.  They  were  making 
for  the  Galata  Bridge,  for  there  was  news  in  the  air  that  they 
had  been  hanging  some  Turkish  Danny  Deevers  in  the  morning. 
Nobody  quite  knew  whether  they  had  been  hanged  yet  or  not. 
Some  people  said  they  had  been  hanged  at  dawn ;  others,  that 
they  were  about  to  be  hanged  ;  others,  that  they  had  just 
been  hanged.     They  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  been  hanged  at 


CONSTANTINOPLE  399 

dawn  :  three  of  them  at  the  end  of  the  bridge,  three  of  them 
opposite  St.  Sophia,  four,  I  think,  opposite  the  House  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  three  somewhere  else — making  thirteen  in  all.  They 
were  soldiers,  and  one  of  them  was  an  officer.  They  were 
hanged  for  having  taken  part  in  a  recent  mutiny  in  the  cause 
of  Abdul  Hamid,  and  for  having  murdered  some  men. 

As  you  walked  farther  along  the  bridge  the  crowd  grew 
denser,  and  right  at  the  end  of  the  bridge  it  was  a  seething  mass, 
kept  back  by  soldiers  from  the  actual  spot  where  the  victims 
were  hanging — the  crowd,  not  a  London-like  crowd,  all  drab 
and  grey,  but  a  living  kaleidoscope  of  startling  colours — the 
colours  of  tulips  and  Turkey  carpets  and  poppy-fields,  red, 
blue,  and  yellow.  The  gallows,  which  were  in  line  along  the 
side  of  the  street  beyond  the  bridge,  were  primitive  tripods  of 
wood.  Each  victim  was  strung  up  by  a  rope  fixed  to  a  pulley. 
The  men  were  hanged  by  being  made  to  stand  on  a  low  chair. 
The  chair  was  kicked  away  and  the  sharp  jerk  killed  them. 
They  were  hanging  not  far  above  the  ground.  They  were  each 
covered  by  a  white  gown,  and  to  the  breast  of  each  one  his 
sentence  was  affixed,  written  in  Turkish  letters.  They  looked 
neither  like  felons  nor  like  murderers,  but  rather  like  happy 
martyrs  (in  a  sacred  picture),  calm,  with  an  inscrutable  content. 
I  had  but  a  glimpse  of  them,  and  then  I  was  carried  away 
by  the  swaying  crowd,  which  soldiers  were  prodding  with  the 
butts  of  their  rifles.  The  dead  soldiers  were  to  hang  there  all 
day.     I  did  not  go  any  farther. 

As  I  was  trying  to  make  my  way  back  through  the  crowd,  a 
Hodja  (a  Moslem  priest)  passed,  and  he  was  roughly  handled 
by  the  soldiers,  and  given  a  few  sharp  blows  in  the  back  with 
their  rifles.  I  heard  fragments  of  conversation,  English  and 
French.  Some  people  were  saying  that  the  exhibition  would 
have  a  satisfactory  effect  on  the  populace.  I  saw  a  Kurd,  a 
fierce-looking  man  who  was  gnashing  his  teeth — not  at  the 
victims,  to  be  sure,  but  at  the  sight  of  three  Moslems  who  had 
died  for  their  faith,  and  for  having  defended  it  against  those 
who  they  were  told  were  its  enemies,  being  made  into  a 
spectacle  after  their  death  for  the  unbeliever  and  the  alien. 

The  following  afternoon  I  was  wandering  about  the  streets 
of  Stamboul  when,  amongsl  the  indolent  cmwd,  I  noticed 
several  men  who  were  peculiar.  Firstly,  they  were  walking 
in    a    hurry.      Secondly,    they   were    dressed    lik<-    Russians, 


400  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

in  long,  grey,  shabby  redingotes,  what  the  Russians  call 
padevki,  and  their  hair,  allowed  to  grow  long,  was  closely 
cropped  at  the  ends  just  over  the  neck,  where  it  hung  in  a 
bunch.  They  wore  high  boots.  I  knew  they  were  Russians, 
and  paid  but  little  attention  to  them,  since  Constantinople 
is  not  a  place,  like  London,  where  the  appearance  of  an 
obvious  foreigner  is  a  remarkable  sight.  But  I  met  an  English 
friend,  who  said :  "  Have  you  seen  the  Russian  pilgrims  ?  " 
This  led  me  to  run  after  them.  I  soon  caught  them  up,  for 
they  were  delayed  under  an  arch  by  some  soldiers  who  were 
escorting  some  prisoners  (soldiers  also). 

"  Are  you  Russian  ?  "  I  asked  one  of  the  pilgrims — a  tall, 
fair  man. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered  ;  "  I  am  from  Russia." 

"  You  are  a  pilgrim  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  I  come  from  Jerusalem." 

The  man  was  walking  in  a  great  hurry,  and  by  this  time  we 
had  reached  the  Galata  Bridge. 

"  Who  were  those  men  the  soldiers  were  leading  ?  "  the 
pilgrim  asked  me. 

"  Those  were  prisoners — soldiers  who  mutinied." 

Here  two  others,  a  grey-bearded  man,  and  a  little,  dark 
man,  joined  in  ;  the  grey-bearded  man  had  a  medicine  bottle 
sticking  out  of  his  coat  pocket.  I  am  certain  it  contained  an 
intoxicating  spirit. 

"  Some  soldiers  were  hanged  here,"  I  added. 

"  Where  ?  "  said  the  man. 

'  There,"  I  answered,  showing  him  the  exact  spot.     "  They 
stayed  there  all  day." 

"  For  all  the  people  to  see,"  said  the  pilgrim,  much  im- 
pressed.    "  Why  were  they  hanged  ?  " 

"  They  mutinied." 

"  Ah,  just  like  in  our  own  country  !  "  said  the  pilgrim. 

"  But,"  joined  in  the  dark  man,  "  have  not  you  sent  away 
your  Gosudar  ?  "  (Sovereign). 

"  I  am  not  from  here ;  I  am  an  Englishman." 

"  Ah,  but  did  the  people  here  send  away  their  Gosudar  ?  ' 

"They  did." 

"  And  was  it  done,"  asked  the  grey-haired  pilgrim,  "  with 
God  favouring  and  assisting  (Po  Bozhemu)  or  not  ?  " 

I  hesitated.     The  brown  man  thought  I  did  not  understand. 


CONSTANTINOPLE  401 

"  Was  it  right  or  wrong  ?  "  he  asked. 
'They  said,"  I  answered,  "  that  tln-ir  Sult.m  had  not  kept 
his  word  ;  that  he  had  given  a  '  Duma  '  and  was  acting  against 
it." 

"  Ah  !  "  said  the  brown-haired  man.  "  So  now  they  have 
a  '  Duma  '  !  " 

"  Yes,"  I  said  ;  "  they  have  liberty  now." 

"  Ah  !  Liberty  !  Eh  !  Eh  !  Eh  !  "  said  the  grey-haired 
man,  and  he  chuckled  to  himself.  Oh,  the  scepticism  of  that 
chuckle  ! — as  much  as  to  say,  we  know  what  that  means. 

"  And  you  have  a  Sovereign  ?  "  asked  the  brown -haired 
man. 

"  Yes  ;  we  have  a  King." 

"  But  your  Queen,  who  was  so  old,  and  ruled  everybody, 
she  is  dead." 

"  Yes  ;  she  is  dead." 

"  Ah,  she  was  wise,  very  wise  !  "  (niudraya). 

We  had  now  crossed  the  bridge.  The  pilgrims  had  hastened 
on  to  their  steamer,  which  was  alongside  the  qua}'.  They 
were  going  back  to  Russia.  But  one  of  them  lagged  behind 
and  almost  bought  a  suit  of  clothes.  I  say  almost,  because  it 
happened  like  this  :  A  clot  lies -seller — Greek,  or  Armenian,  or 
Heaven  knows  what ! — was  carrying  a  large  heap  of  clothes  : 
striped  trousers,  black  waistcoats,  and  blue  serge  coats.  The 
brown  pilgrim  chose  a  suit.  The  seller  asked  five  roubles.  The 
pilgrim  offered  three.  All  the  steps  of  the  bargain  were  gone 
through  at  an  incredible  speed,  because  the  pilgrim  was  in  a 
great  hurry.  The  seller  asked  him  among  other  things  if  he 
would  like  my  blue  serge  jacket.  The  pilgrim  said  certainly 
not  ;  it  was  not  good  enough.  Finally,  after  looking  at  all  the 
clothes  and  trying  on  one  coat,  which  was  two  sizes  too  small, 
he  made  his  choice  and  offered  three  roubles  and  a  half.  The 
bargain  was  just  going  to  be  closed  when  the  pilgrim  suddenly 
said  the  stuff  was  bad  and  went  away  as  fast  as  he  could,  bidding 
me  good-bye.     He  was  a  native  of  Voronezh. 

After  a  short  spell  of  cold  weather  the  spring  came  back  once 
more  and  opened  "  her  young  adventurous  arms  "  to  greet  the 
day  of  the  "  Coronation  "  of  the  new  Sultan.  There  was  that 
peculiar  mixture  of  warmth  and  freshness  in  the  air,  that  in- 
toxicating sweetness,  which  you  only  get  in  the  South;  and 
after  a  recent  rainfall  the  green  foliage  in  which  the  red-tiled 
26 


402  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

houses  of  the  city  are  embedded,  like  red  bricks  in  moss, 
gleamed  with  a  new  freshness.  The  streets  were  early  crowded 
with  people  eager  to  make  their  way  towards  Eyoub,  to  the 
mosque  where  the  Sultan  is  invested  with  the  Sword  of  Osman. 

I  drove  with  Aubrey  Herbert  across  the  old  bridge 
into  the  straggling  Jewish  quarter  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Golden  Horn.  The  houses  there  are  square  and  wooden, 
rickety  and  crooked,  top-heavy,  bending  over  the  narrow  street 
as  though  they  were  going  to  fall  down,  squalid,  dirty,  dusty, 
and  rotten  ;  they  are  old,  and  sometimes  you  come  across  a 
stone  house  with  half-obliterated  remains  of  beautiful  Byzan- 
tine window  arches  and  designs.  Every  now  and  then  you  got 
glimpses  of  side  streets  as  steep  as  Devonshire  lanes  and  as 
narrow  as  London  slums,  with  wistaria  in  flower  trailing  across 
the  street  from  roof  to  roof.  All  along  the  road  people  were  at 
their  doorsteps,  and  people  and  carriages  were  moving  in  the 
direction  of  Eyoub.  After  a  time,  progress,  which  up  to  then 
had  been  easy  and  rapid,  came  to  a  dead  stop,  and  the  coachman 
who  was  driving  Herbert  and  myself  dived  into  a  side  lane  and 
began  driving  in  the  opposite  direction,  back,  as  it  seemed, 
towards  Constantinople.  Then  he  all  at  once  took  a  turning 
to  the  right,  and  we  began  to  climb  a  steep  and  stony  track 
until  we  reached  the  walls  of  Constantinople.  These  walls, 
which  were  built,  I  believe,  by  the  Emperor  Theodosius,  are 
enormously  thick  and  broad.  As  we  reached  them,  people 
were  climbing  up  on  to  the  top  of  them. 

Soon  we  came  to  a  crowd,  which  was  being  kept  back 
by  soldiers,  and  the  intervention  of  an  officer  was  necessary 
to  let  us  drive  through  the  Adrianople  Gate  into  the  road 
along  which  the  Sultan  was  to  pass  on  his  way  back  to  Con- 
stantinople after  the  ceremony.  We  drove  through  the  gate, 
right  on  to  the  route  of  the  procession,  which  was  stony,  rough, 
and  steep.  We  were  at  the  top  of  a  high  hill.  To  the  right  of 
us  were  the  huge  broad  walls,  as  thick  as  the  towers  of  our 
English  castles,  grassy  on  the  top,  and  dotted  with  a  thick 
crowd  of  men  dressed  in  colours  as  bright  as  the  plumage  of 
tropical  birds.  At  this  moment,  as  I  write,  the  colour  of  one 
woman's  dress  flashes  before  me — a  brilliant  cerulean,  bright 
as  the  back  of  a  kingfisher,  gleaming  in  the  sun  like  a  jewel. 
To  the  left  was  a  vista  of  trees,  delicate  spring  foliage,  cypresses, 
mosques,  green  slopes,  and  blue  hills.     Both  sides  of  the  road 


CONSTANTINOPLE  403 

were  lined  with  a  many-coloured  crowd    some  sitting  011  chairs, 

some  in  tents,  some  on  primitive  wooden  stands.  Lines  of 
soldiers  kept  the  people  back.  The  road  it-elf  was  narrow. 
It  was  a  crowd  of  poor  people!  but  it  was  none  the  less 
picturesque  on  that  account.  Vendors  of  lemonade  and  water- 
carriers  walked  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  people.  Some 
of  the  spectators  hung  small  carpets  from  their  seats.  The 
tints  varied  in  size  and  quality,  some  boasting  of  magnificent 
embroideries  and  others  were  such  as  gipsies  pitch  near  a 
race-course.  We  drove  on  and  on  through  this  double  line 
of  coloured  people  and  troops,  down  the  narrow  cobbled  way, 
until  we  reached  the  level,  and  there,  after  a  time,  we  v. 
obliged  to  leave  the  carriage  and  go  on  foot. 

The  makeshift  stands,  the  extemporary  decorations,  the 
untidy  crowd,  proved  that  in  the  East  no  elaboration  and  no 
complicated  arrangements  are  necessary  to  make  a  pageant. 
Nature  and  the  people  provide  colours  more  gorgeous  than 
any  wealth  of  panoplies,  banners,  and  gems  could  display,  and 
the  people  seem  to  be  part  of  nature  herself  and  to  share  her 
brightness. 

We  walked  through  a  cordon  of  cavalry  until  we  reached 
the  mosque  of  Eyoub.  The  Sultan  had  already  arrived  and  his 
carriage  was  waiting  at  the  gate.  The  carriages  of  other  digni- 
taries were  standing  in  a  side  street.  A  small  street  of  wooden 
houses  led  up  to  the  mosque.  We  were  beckoned  to  the 
ground  floor  of  one  of  these  houses  by  a  brown  personage  in  a 
yellow  turban.  We  were  shown  on  to  a  small  platform  dividi  d 
into  two  tiers,  crowded  with  Turkish  men  and  women  ;  others 
were  standing  on  the  floor.  Some  of  the  spectators  were 
officers  ;  some  wore  uniform  ;  among  those  on  the  lower  tier 
were  some  soldiers,  a  policeman,  and  a  postman.  We  w 
welcomed  with  great  courtesy  and  given  seats.  But  whenever 
we  asked  questions,  every  question — no  matter  what  it  \ 
about — was  taken  to  mean  that  we  were  anxious  to  know  when 
the  Sultan  was  coming.  And  to  every  question  the  same 
answer  was  made  gently  by  these  kind  and  courteous  peopl  , 
as  though  they  were  dealing  with  children  :  "  Have  patiei 
my  lamb,  the  Sultan  will  soon  be  hen 

Immediately  in  front  of  OS  stood  the  large  French  barouche 
of  the  Sultan,  drawn  by  four  bay  horses,  the  carriage  glittering 
with  gilding  and  lined  with  satin.     We  waited  about  an  horn, 


404  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

the  people  every  now  and  then  continuing  to  reassure  us  that 

the  Sultan  would  soon  be  there.     Then  we  heard  the  band. 

Two  men  spread  a  small  carpet  on  the  steps  of  the  carriage,  into 

which  the  Sultan  immediately  stepped,  and  drove  off,  headed 

by  a  sais  dressed  in  blue  and  gold  and  mounted  on  a  bay  horse. 

As  this  large  gilded  barouche  passed,  with  the  Sultan  in 

uniform  inside  it,  the  spirit  of  the  Second  Empire  seemed  for 

one  moment  to  hover  in  the  air,  and  I  half  expected  the  band 

to  play  : 

"  Voici  le  sabre,  le  sabre,  le  sabre, 
Voici  le  sabre,  le  sabre  de  mon  pere," 

which,  as  far  as  the  words  go,  would  have  been  appropriate, 
as  the  Sultan  had  just  been  girded  with  the  sword  of  his 
predecessors.  This  sudden  ghost  of  the  Second  Empire  con- 
trasted sharply  with  the  spectators  with  whom  I  was  standing. 
They  belonged  to  the  Arabian  Nights,  to  infinitely  old  and 
far-off  things,  like  the  Old  Testament.  They  became  solemn 
when  the  Sultan  passed,  and  murmured  words  of  blessing. 
But  there  was  no  outward  show  of  enthusiasm  and  no  cheering 
nor  even  clapping. 

I  wondered  whether  the  ghost  of  the  Second  Empire,  which 
had  seemed  to  be  present,  were  an  omen  or  not,  and  whether 
the  ceremony  which  marked  the  inauguration,  not  only  of  a 
new  reign  but  also  of  a  new  regime — a  totally  different  order  of 
things,  a  fresh  era  and  epoch — were  destined  to  see  its  hope 
fulfilled,  or  whether  under  the  gaiety  and  careless  lightness 
it  was  in  reality  something  terribly  solemn  and  fatal  of  quite 
another  kind,  namely,  the  funeral  procession  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire. 

Towards  the  end  of  my  stay  I  was  taken  by  the  British 
Ambassador  and  Lady  Lowther  in  their  yacht  to  Brusa,  where 
we  spent  three  nights.  Brusa  in  spring  is  one  of  the  most  lovely 
places  in  the  world.  It  is  nested  high  on  a  hill,  which  you 
reach  after  a  long  drive  from  the  coast,  and  before  you  towers 
Mount  Olympus.  Brusa  is  a  place  of  roses  and  streams  and 
elegant  mosques,  and  baths  built  of  seaweed-coloured  marbles. 
The  cool  rivulets  flow  down  the  hill  like  the  little  streams 
described  by  Dante  : 

"  Li  ruscelletti  che  de'  verdi  colli 
Del  Casentin  discendon  giuso  in  Arno, 
Facendo  i  lor  canali  e  freddi  e  molli," 


CONSTANTINOPLE  405 

The  water  of  the  springs  and  streams  at  Brus;i  ed  to  have 

a  secret  freshness  of  their  own.  The  roses  were  in  full  bloom; 
nightingales  sang  all  day;  and  the  cool  sound  of  running  water 
was  always  in  our'-,  cars. 

I  left  Constantinople  in  the  middle  of  June,  convinced  of 
one  thing,  that  the  new  Turkish  regime  was  not  unlike  the 
old  one,  and  that  what  a  man  who  had  lived  for  years  in  Con- 
stantinople had  told  me  was  true.  When  I  had  mentioned  the 
Young  Turks  to  him,  he  said  :  "  Qui  sont  les  jeunes  Turcs  ? 
II  n'y  a  que  les  Turcs." 


CHAPTER    XXII 

THE  BALKAN  WAR,  1912 

/AN  arrive  novice  a  toutes  les  guerres,"  wrote  the  French 
4  I  philosopher  ;  or  if  he  did  not,  he  said  something 
like  it.  I  have  never  known  a  place  where  being 
on  the  spot  made  so  sharp  a  difference  in  one's  point  of 
view  as  the  Near  East,  and  where  one's  ignorance,  and  the 
ignorance  of  the  great  mass  of  one's  fellow-countrymen,  was  so 
keenly  brought  home  to  one.  The  change  in  the  point  of  view 
happened  with  surprising  abruptness  the  moment  one  crossed 
the  Austrian  frontier.  There  are  other  changes  of  a  physical 
nature  which  happen  as  well  when  one  crosses  the  frontier 
into  any  kingdom  where  war  is  taking  place.  The  whole  of 
the  superficial  luxuries  of  civilisation  seem  to  disappear  in  a 
twinkling  ;  and  so  adaptable  a  creature  is  man  that  you  feel 
no  surprise  ;  you  just  accept  everything  as  if  things  had  always 
been  so.  The  trains  crawl  ;  they  stop  at  every  station  ;  you 
no  longer  complain  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  luxuries  of  your 
sleeping-car  ;  you  are  thankful  to  have  a  seat  at  all.  It  is  no 
longer  a  question  of  criticising  the  quality  of  the  dinner  or  the 
swiftness  of  the  service.  It  is  a  question  whether  you  will  get 
a  piece  of  bread  or  a  glass  of  water  during  the  ^next_ twenty- 
four  hours. 

Belgrade  Station  was  full  of  reservists  and  peasants :  men 
in  uniform,  men  half  in  uniform,  men  in  the  clothes  of  the 
mountains — sheepskin  coats,  putties,  and  shoes  made  of  twisted 
straw  ;  dark,  swarthy,  sunburnt  and  wind-tanned,  hard  men, 
carrying  rifles  and  a  quantity  of  bundles  and  filling  the  cattle 
vans  to  overflowing.  At  every  station  we  passed  trains,  most 
of  them  empty,  which  were  coming  back  to  fetch  supplies  of 
meat.  Every  platform  and  every  station  were  crowded  with 
men  in  uniforms  of  every  description.     A  Servian  officer  got 

i  nto  the  carriage  in  which  I  was  travelling.     He  was  dressed  in 

406 


THE  BALKAN  WAR.  1912  407 

khaki.  He  wore  a  white  chrysanthemum  in  his  cap,  a  bunch 
of  Michaelmas  daisies  in  hi-  belt,  and  he  carried,  besides  his 
rifle  and  a  khaki  bag  which  had  been  taken  from  the  TurkB,  a 
small  umbrella.  He  had  been  wounded  in  the  foot  at  Kuman- 
ovo.  He  was  on  his  way  to  Uskub.  lie  was  a  man  of  commerce, 
and  had  closed  his  establishment  to  go  to  the  war  ;  the  majority 
of  the  officers  in  his  regiment  were  men  of  commerce,  he 
said.  They  had  sacrificed  everything  to  go  to  the  war,  and 
that  was  one  reason  why  they  were  not  going  to  allow  the 
gains  of  the  war,  which  they  declared  were  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  to  their  country,  to  be  snatched  from  them  by 
diplomatists  at  a  green  table.  "  If  they  want  to  take  from 
us  what  we  have  won  by  the  sword,"  he  said,  "  let  them  take 
it  by  the  sword." 

I  asked  him  about  the  fighting  at  Kumanovo.  He  said  the 
Turks  had  fought  like  heroes,  but  that  they  were  miserably 
led.  He  then  began  to  describe  the  horrors  of  the  war  in  the 
Servian  language.  As  I  understood  about  one  word  in  fifty, 
I  lost  the  thread  of  the  discourse,  and  so  I  lured  him  back  into 
a  more  neutral  language.  He  told  me  that  someone  had  asked 
a  Turkish  prisoner  how  it  came  about  that  the  Turks,  whom  all 
the  world  knew  to  be  such  brave  soldiers,  were  nevertheless 
always  beaten.  The  Turk,  after  the  habit  of  his  race,  answered 
by  an  apologue  as  follows  :  "  A  certain  man,"  he  said,  "once 
possessed  a  number  of  camels  and  an  ass.  He  was  a  hard 
taskmaster  to  the  camels,  and  he  worked  them  to  the  uttermost ; 
and  after  trading  for  many  years  in  different  lands,  he  became 
exceedingly  rich.  At  last  one  day  he  himself  fell  sick  ;  and 
feeling  that  his  end  was  drawing  nigh,  he  wished  to  relieve 
himself  of  the  burden  on  his  soul,  so  he  bade  the  camels 
draw  near  to  him,  and  he  addressed  them  thus  :  '  I  am  dying, 
camels,  dying,  only  I  have  most  uncivilly  kept  death  waiting, 
until  I  have  unburdened  my  soul  to  you.  Camels,  I  have  done 
you  a  grievous  wrrong.  When  you  were  hungry,  I  stinted  you 
of  food,  when  you  were  tlursty,  I  denied  you  drink,  and 
when  you  were  weary,  I  urged  you  on  and  denied  you  rest  ; 
and  ever  and  always  I  denied  you  the  full  share  of  your  fair 
and  just  wage.  Now  I  am  dying,  and  all  this  lies  heavily 
on  my  soul,  I  crave  your  forgiveness,  so  that  I  may  die  in 
peace.  Can  you  forgive  me,  camels,  for  all  the  wrong  I  have 
done  you  ?  '    The  camels  withdrew  to  talk   it  over.     After 


/ 


408  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

a  while  the  Head  Camel  returned  and  spoke  to  the  merchant 
thus  :  '  That  you  ever  overworked  us,  we  forgive  you ;  that 
you  underfed  us,  we  forgive  you  ;  that  you  never  remembered 
to  pay  us  our  full  wage,  we  forgive  you  ;  but  that  you  always 
let  the  ass  go  first,  Allah  may  forgive  you,  but  we  never  can  !  '" 
It  took  over  twelve  hours  to  get  from  Belgrade  to  the 
junction  of  Nish,  where  there  was  a  prospect  of  food.  When 
we  stopped  at  one  station  in  the  twilight  there  was  a  great 
noise  of  cheering  from  another  train,  and  a  dense  crowd  of 
soldiers  and  women  throwing  flowers.  Then  in  the  midst  of 
the  clamour  and  the  murmur  somebody  played  a  tune  on  a 
pipe.  A  little  Slav  tune  written  in  a  scale  which  has  a 
technical  name — let  us  say  the  Phrygian  mode — a  plaintive, 
piping  tune,  as  melancholy  as  the  cry  of  a  seabird.  The 
very  voice  of  exile.  I  recognised  the  tune  at  once.  It  is 
in  the  first  ten  pages  of  Balakirev's  collection  of  Russian  folk- 
songs under  the  name  "  Rekrutskaya  " — that  is  to  say,  recruits' 
song.  Plaintive,  melancholy,  quaint,  and  piping,  it  has  no 
heartache  in  it  ;  it  is  the  luxury  of  grief,  the  expression  of  idle 
tears,  the  conventional  sorrow  of  the  recruit  who  is  leaving 
his  home. 

"  You  are  going  far  away,  far  away  from  poor  Jeannette, 
And  there's  no  one  left  to  love  me  now,  and  you  will  soon  forget." 

So,  in  the  song  of  our  grandfathers  which  I  have  quoted 
earlier  in  the  book,  the  maiden  sang  to  the  conscript,  adding 
that  were  she  King  of  France,  "  or,  still  better,  Pope  of 
Rome,"  she  would  abolish  war,  and  consequently  the  parting 
of  lovers.  But  the  song  of  the  Slav  recruit  in  its  piping  notes 
seems  to  say  :  "I  am  going  far  away,  but  I  am  not  really 
sorry  to  go.  They  will  be  glad  to  get  rid  of  me  at  home,  and 
I,  in  the  barracks,  shall  have  meat  to  eat  twice  a  day,  and  jolly 
comrades,  and  I  shall  see  the  big  town  and  find  a  new  love  as 
good  as  my  true  love.  They  will  mend  my  broken  heart  there  ; 
but  in  the  meantime  let  me  make  the  most  of  the  situation. 
Let  me  collect  money  and  get  drunk,  and  let  me  sing  my  sad 
songs,  songs  of  parting  and  exile,  and  let  me  enjoy  the  melan- 
choly situation  to  the  full." 

That  is  what  the  wistful,  piping  song,  played  on  a  wooden 
flageolet  of  some  kind,  seemed  to  say.  It  just  pierced  through 
the  noise  and  then  stopped  ;    a  touching  interlude,  like  the 


THE  BALKAN  WAR,   1912  409 

shepherd's  piping  amidst  the  weariness,  the  fever  and  the  fret, 
the  delirious  remembrance  and  the  agonic -d  expectation,  of 
the  last  act  <>f  Wagner's  Tristan  und  IsolJa.  The  train  moved 
on  into  the  gathering  dark 

We  arrived  at  Nish  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening.  It 
was  dark  ;  the  station  was  sparsely  lighted ;  the  buffet,  to 
which  we  had  been  looking  forward  all  day,  was  as  crowded  as 
a  sardine-box  and  apparently  devoid  of  anything  suggesting 
food.  Wounded  soldiers,  reservists,  officers  filled  the  waiting- 
room  and  the  platform.  The  Servian  officer  dived  into  the 
crowd  and  returned  presently,  bringing  his  sheaves  with  him 
in  the  shape  of  three  plates  of  hot  chicken. 

Nish  seemed  an  unfit-like  meeting-place  for  triumphant 
soldiers  ;  it  resembled  rather  the  scene  of  a  conspiracy  in 
a  melodrama,  where  tired  conspirators  were  plotting  nothing 
at  all.  One  felt  cut  off  from  all  news.  In  London,  one 
knew,  in  every  sitting-room  people  were  marking  off  the  move- 
ments of  the  battles  with  paper  flags  on  inaccurate  maps. 
Here  at  Nish,  in  the  middle  of  a  crowd  of  men  who  either  had 
fought  or  were  going  to  fight,  one  knew  less  about  the  war  than 
in  Fleet  Street.  One  bought  a  newspaper,  but  it  dealt  with 
everything  except  war  news. 

A  man  came  into  the  refreshment-room — the  name  was  in 
this  case  ironical — and  said,  "  I  have  had  nothing  to  eat,  not  a 
piece  of  bread  and  not  a  drop  of  water,  for  twenty-four  hours," 
and  then,  before  anybody  could  suggest  a  remedy — for  food 
there  was  none — he  went  away.  Afterwards  I  saw  him  with 
a  chicken  in  his  hand.  One  man  was  carrying  a  small  live 
pig,  which  squealed.  In  the  corner  of  the  platform  two  men, 
with  crutches  and  bandages,  dressed  in  the  clothes  of  the 
country,  wire  sitting  down,  looking  as  if  they  were  tired  of 
life.  I  offered  them  a  piece  of  cold  sausage,  which  they 
were  too  tired  to  accept  ;  only  at  the  sight  of  a  cigarette  one  of 
them  made  a  gesture,  and,  being  given  one,  smoked  and  smoked 
and  smoked.  I  knew  the  feeling.  Suddenly,  in  the  darkness,  a 
sleeping-car  appeared,  to  the  intense  surprise  of  everyone — an 
International  sleeping-car,  with  sheets,  and  plenty  of  room  in 
it.  My  travelling  companion  and  myself  started  for  Sofia, 
where  we  arrived  the  next  morning. 

At  Sofia  the  scene  on  the  platform  was  different.  The  place 
was  full  of   bustle  ;    the   platform  crowded   with    Red  Cross 


410  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

men,  nurses,  and  soldiers,  in  tidy,  practical  uniforms.  The 
refreshment-room,  too,  was  crowded  with  doctors.  You  heard 
fragments  of  many  languages  :  the  scene  might  have  been 
Mukden,  1904,  or,  indeed,  any  railway  station  in  any  war  any- 
where. An  exceedingly  capable  porter  got  me  my  luggage 
with  dispatch,  and  I  drove  to  the  hotel  in  a  "  phaeton,"  but 
not  with  the  coursers  of  the  sun.  The  horses  here  had  all  gone 
to  the  war.  At  the  hotel  I  was  first  given — the  only  room  said 
to  be  vacant — a  room  which  was  an  annex  to  the  cafe.  For 
furniture  it  had  six  old  card-tables  and  nothing  else. 

Full  of  Manchurian  memories,  I  was  about  to  think  this 
luxurious,  when  the  offending  Adam  in  me  quite  suddenly 
revolted,  and  I  demanded  and  obtained  instead  a  luxurious 
upper  chamber.  I  stayed  about  a  week  at  Sofia,  and  made 
unavailing  efforts  to  get  to  the  front.  I  was  then  told  I 
would  find  it  easier  to  get  to  the  front  where  the  Servian 
Army  was  fighting.  So,  laden  with  papers  and  passports,  I 
started  for  Uskub. 

I  travelled  from  Sofia  to  Nish  in  the  still  existing  comfortable 
sleeping-cars  ;  but  when  I  arrived  once  more  at  the  junction 
of  Nish  I  learnt  a  lesson  which  I  thought  I  had  mastered  many 
years  ago,  and  that  is,  take  in  a  war  as  much  luggage  as  you 
possibly  can  to  your  civilised  base,  but  once  you  start  for  the 
front  or  anywhere  near  it,  take  nothing  at  all  except  a  tea- 
basket  and  a  small  bottle  of  brandy.  I  had  only  a  small  trunk 
with  me,  but  the  stationmaster  refused  to  let  it  proceed.  War 
goes  to  the  heads  of  stationmasters  like  wine.  This  particular 
stationmaster  had  no  right  whatsoever  to  stop  my  small  trunk 
on  the  grounds  that  it  was  full  of  contraband  goods,  and  he 
could  perfectly  well  have  had  it  examined  then  and  there  ; 
instead  of  which  he  said  it  would  have  to  be  taken  to  the  Custom 
House  Office  in  the  town,  which  would  involve  a  journey  of  two 
hours  and  the  missing  of  my  train.  I  was  obliged  to  leave  my 
trunk  at  the  station,  nor  cast  one  longing,  lingering  look  behind. 
The  only  reason  I  mention  this  episode,  which  has  no  sort  of 
interest  in  itself,  is  to  illustrate  something  which  I  will  come  to 
later.  At  Nish  I  got  into  a  slow  train.  The  railway  carriage 
was  full  of  people.  There  was  in  it  a  Servian  poet,  who  had 
temporarily  exchanged  the  lyre  for  the  lancet,  and  enrolled 
himself  in  the  Medical  Service.  His  name  was  Dr.  Milan  Curcm 
— pronounced  Churchill.     He  showed  me  the  utmost  kindness. 


THE  BALKAN  WAR,  1912  4" 

Like  all  modern  poets,  he  was  intensely  practical,  and  an  admir- 
able man  of  business,  and  he  promi  ed  to  get  me  back  my  trunk 
and  either  to  bring  it  to  Uskub  himself,  as  1m-  was  continually 
travelling  backwards  and  forwards  between  Uskub  and  Nish, 
or  to  have  it  sent  wherever  I  wished.  He  spoke  several 
languages,  and  we  discussed  the  war.  He  said  the  Servians 
resented  the  abuse  which  had  been  levelled  against  them  by 
Pierre  Loti.  Pierre  Loti,  he  said,  accused  them  of  being 
barbarians  and  of  attacking  Turkey  without  reason. 

"  We,"  said  the  poet,  "  hate  war  as  much  as  anyone. 
What  does  Pierre  Loti  know  of  our  history  ?  What  does 
he  know  of  Turkish  rule  in  Servia  ?  He  knows  Stamboul ; 
'  but  what  does  he  know  of  Turkey  who  only  Stamboul 
knows  ?  '  Besides,  if  Pierre  Loti's  knowledge  of  Turkey  was 
anything  like  his  knowledge  of  Japan,  as  reflected  in  that 
pretty  book  called  Madame  Chrysantheme — a  book  which 
made  all  serious  scholars  of  Japan  rabid  with  rage — it  is 
not  worth  much."  He  had  no  wish  to  deny  the  Turks 
their  qualities.  That  was  not  the  point.  The  point  was 
Turkish  rule  in  Servia  in  the  past,  and  that  was  unspeak- 
able. The  poet  was  obliged  to  get  out  at  the  first  station  we 
stopped  at,  and  after  his  departure  I  moved  into  another  com- 
partment, in  which  there  were  a  wounded  soldier,  a  young 
Russian  volunteer,  who  was  studying  at  the  Military  Academy 
at  Moscow,  two  men  of  business  who  were  now  soldiers,  and  a 
gendarme  who  had  been  standing  up  all  night,  and  who  stood 
up  all  day.  I  offered  these  people  some  tea,  having  a  tea- 
basket  with  me.  They  accepted  it  gratefully,  and  after  a  little 
time  one  of  them  asked  me  if  I  were  an  Austrian.  I  said  no  ; 
I  was  an  Englishman.  They  said  :  "  We  thought  it  extrem<  lv 
odd  that  an  Austrian  should  offer  us  tea."  The  wounded 
soldier,  thinking  I  was  a  doctor,  asked  me  if  I  could  do  any- 
thing to  his  wound.  As  he  spoke  Servian  I  could  only  under- 
stand a  little  of  what  he  said.  It  seemed  heart-breaking,  just 
as  one  began  to  get  on  more  or  Less  in  Bulgarian,  to  have  to 
shift  one's  language  to  one  which,  although  the  same  in  essential-, 
is  superficially  utterly  different  in  accent,  intonation,  and  in 
most  of  the  common  words  of  everyday  life  !  Servian  and 
Bulgarian  are  the  same  language  at  root,  but  Servian  is  more 
like   Polish,   Bulgarian   more  like  Russian.      Servian  is  a  gn.it 

literary  language,  with  a  mass  of  poetry  and  a  beautiful  store 


4i2  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

of  folk  songs  and  folk  epics.  Bulgarian  compared  with  it  is 
more  or  less  of  a  patois  ;  it  is  like  Russian  with  all  the  inflections 
left  out.  With  the  help  of  the  Russian  student  I  gathered  that 
the  soldier  had  been  wounded  at  the  battle  of  Kumanovo, 
that  his  wound  had  been  dressed  and  bandaged  by  a  doctor, 
but  that  subsequently  he  had  gone  to  a  wise  woman,  who  had 
put  some  balm  on  it,  and  that  the  effect  of  the  balm  had 
been  disastrous.  I  strongly  recommended  him  to  consult 
a  doctor  on  the  first  possible  occasion.  It  is  travelling  under 
such  circumstances,  in  war-time  especially,  that  one  really  gets 
beneath  the  crust  of  a  country.  Every  man  who  travels  in 
an  International  sleeping-car  becomes  more  or  less  inter- 
national ;  and  it  is  not  in  hotels  or  embassies  that  you  get  face 
to  face  with  a  people,  however  excellent  your  recommendations. 
But  travel  third-class  in  a  full  railway  carriage,  in  times  of  war, 
and  you  get  to  the  heart  of  the  country  through  which  you  are 
travelling.  The  qualities  of  the  people  are  stripped  naked — 
their  good  qualities  and  their  bad  qualities  ;  and  this  is  why  I 
mentioned  the  episode  of  the  trunk,  in  order  to  call  attention 
to  the  extreme  kindness  shown  to  me  by  the  Servian  poet,  Dr. 
Curcin,  who  rescued  the  trunk  for  me  at  great  personal  incon- 
venience. I  hoped  that  the  "  Georgian  "  poets  would  do  the 
same  for  a  Servian  war  correspondent,  supposing  there  were 
a  war  in  England  and  they  were  to  come  across  one. 

After  many  hours  we  came  to  a  stop  where  it  was  necessary 
to  change,  at  Vranja  ;  and  then  began  one  of  those  long  war 
waits  which  are  so  exasperating.  The  station  was  full  to  over- 
flowing with  troops  ;  there  was  no  room  to  sit  down  in  the 
waiting-room.  We  waited  there  for  two  hours,  and  then,  at 
last,  the  train  was  formed  which  was  bound  for  Uskub.  There 
were  several  members  of  the  Servian  Parliament  who  had 
reserved  places  in  this  train,  and  in  a  moment,  it  appeared  to 
be  quite  full,  and  there  seemed  to  be  no  chance  of  getting  a 
place  in  it.  I  was  handicapped  also  by  carrying  a  saddle  and 
a  bridle,  which  blocked  up  the  narrow  corridor  of  the  railway 
carriage.  But  I  got  a  place  in  the  train,  and  room  was  found 
for  the  saddle  owing  to  the  kindness  of  an  aviator  called 
Alexander  Maritch.  He  was  one  of  those  extremely  unselfish 
people  who  seem  to  spend  their  life  in  doing  nothing  but 
extremely  tiresome  things  for  other  people.  He  carried  my 
saddle  in  his  hands  for  half  an  hour,  and  at  last  managed  to 


THE  BALKAN   WAR,    [912  H3 

find  room  for  it  where  it  would  not  be  in  the  way  of  all  tin- 
other  passengers.  He  was  an  astonishingly  capable  man  with 
his  hands  and  his  fingers.  There  appeared  to  be  nothing  he 
could  not  do.  He  uncoupled  the  railway  carriages  ;  he  mended 
during  the  journey  a  quantity  of  broken  objects,  and  he  spent 
the  whole  of  the  time  in  making  himself  useful  in  one  way  or 
another. 

Towards  nightfall  we  arrived  at  the  station  of  Kumanovo, 
and  got  out  to  have  a  look  at  the  battlefield.  It  was  quite 
dark  and  the  ground  was  covered  with  snow.  Drawn  up  near 
the  station  were  a  lot  of  guns  and  ammunition  carts  which 
had  been  taken  from  the  Turks.  Here  were  some  Maxim  guns 
whose  screens  were  perforated  by  balls,  which  shows  that  they 
could  not  have  been  made  of  good  material  ;  and  indeed 
at  Uskub  I  was  told  that  there  were  no  doubt  cases  where 
the  Turkish  material  was  bad ;  but  another  and  more  potent 
cause  of  the  disorganisation  in  the  Turkish  Army  was  the 
manner  in  which  the  Turks  handled,  or  rather  mishandled, 
their  weapons.  They  forgot  to  unscrew  the  shells  ;  they  jammed 
the  rifles.  This  is  not  surprising  to  anyone  who  has  ever  seen 
a  Turk  handle  an  umbrella.  He  carries  it  straight  in  front  of 
him,  pointing  towards  him  in  the  air,  if  it  is  shut,  and  sideways 
and  beyond  his  head,  if  it  is  open. 

We  arrived  at  Uskub  about  half-past  eight.  The  snow 
was  thawing.  The  aspect  was  desolate.  The  aviator  found  me 
a  room  in  the  Hotel  de  la  Liberie  ;  but  the  window  in  it  was 
broken,  and  there  was  no  fuel.  It  was  as  damp  as  a  vault. 
We  had  dinner.  I  happened  to  mention  that  it  would  be  nice 
to  smoke  a  cigarette,  but  I  had  not  got  any  more.  At  once  the 
aviator  darted  out  of  the  room  and  disappeared.  "  He  won't 
come  back,"  said  one  of  his  friends,  "  till  he  has  found  you  some 
cigarettes,  you  may  be  sure  of  that."  In  an  hour's  time  he 
returned  with  three  cigarettes,  having  scoured  the  town  for 
them,  the  shops,  of  course,  being  shut. 

Uskub  is  a  picturesque,  straggling  place,  and  at  that  time 
of  the  year,  swamped  as  it  was  in  inching  snow,  an  incredibly 
dirty  place,  situated  between  a  mountain  and  the  river  Vardar. 
Like  all  Turkish  towns,  it  is  ill-paved,  or  rather  not  paved  at 
all,  and  full  of  mud.  It  is — or  was — largely  inhabited  by 
Albanian  Mohammedans.  As  the  headquarter--  of  the  Servian 
Army,  it  was  full  of  officer>  and  soldiers  ;    there  was  not  much 


414  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OE  MEMORY 

food,  and  still  less  wood.  Here  were  the  war  correspondents. 
They  had  not  been  allowed  to  go  any  farther  ;  but  the  order 
went  out  that  they  could,  if  they  liked,  go  on  to  Kuprulu,  a 
little  farther  down  the  line,  whence  it  was  impossible  to  tele- 
graph. A  stay  at  Uskub,  as  it  was  then,  would  afford  a  tourist 
a  taste  of  all  the  discomforts  of  war  without  any  of  its  excite- 
ment. The  principal  distraction  of  the  people  at  Uskub  was 
having  their  boots  cleaned  ;  and  as  the  streets  were  full  of 
large  lakes  of  water  and  high  mounds  of  slush,  the  effect  of  the 
cleaning  was  not  permanent.  Matthew  Arnold  was  once  asked 
to  walk  home  after  dinner  on  a  wet  night  in  London.  '  No," 
he  said ;  "  I  can't  get  my  feet  wet.  It  would  spoil  my  style." 
Matthew  Arnold's  style  would  have  been  annihilated  at  Uskub. 

The  stories  told  by  eye-witnesses  of  the  events  immediately 
preceding  the  occupation  of  Uskub  by  the  Serbians  were  tragi- 
comic in  a  high  degree.  In  the  first  place,  the  population  of 
the  place  never  for  one  moment  thought  that  the  Turks  could 
possibly  be  beaten  by  the  Servians.  Suddenly,  in  the  midst 
of  their  serene  confidence,  came  the  cry:  "The  Giaours  are 
upon  us."  Every  Turkish  official  and  officer  in  the  place  lost 
his  head,  with  the  exception  of  the  Vali  (head  of  the  district), 
who  was  the  only  man  possessing  an  active  mind.  Otherwise 
the  Turkish  officers  fled  to  the  Consulates  and  took  refuge 
there,  trembling  and  quaking  with  terror. 

The  two  problems  which  called  for  immediate  solution  were  : 
(a)  to  prevent  further  fighting  taking  place  in  the  town  ;  (b) 
to  prevent  a  general  massacre  of  the  Christians  before  the 
Servians  entered  the  town.  To  prevent  fighting  in  the  town, 
the  Turkish  troops  had  to  be  persuaded  to  get  out  of  it.  This 
was  done.  The  only  hope  of  solving  both  these  problems  lay 
in  the  Vali.  All  the  Consuls,  as  I  said,  agreed  that  the  Vali's 
conduct  on  this  occasion  shone  amidst  the  encircling  cowardice 
of  the  other  officers  and  officials.  Already  before  the  news  of  the 
battle  of  Kumanovo  had  reached  the  town  about  two  hundred 
Christians  had  been  arrested  on  suspicion  and  put  in  prison.  They 
were  not  of  the  criminal  class,  but  just  ordinary  people — priests, 
shopmen,  and  women.  About  three  hundred  Mohammedans 
were  already  in  the  prison.  News  came  to  the  Russian  Consul- 
General,  M.  Kalnikoff,  that  these  prisoners  had  had  nothing  to 
eat  for  two  days.  He  went  at  once  to  the  prison  and  demanded 
to  be  let  in.     He  heard  shots  being  fired  inside.     Some  of  the 


THE  BALKAN    WAR,   1912  41  •'. 

Albanians  were  firing  into  the  air.  He  asked  the  Governoi  ol 
the  prison  whether  it  was  true  that  the  prisoners  had  had  no 
food  for  two  days,  and  the  Governor  said  it  was  perfei  tly  true, 
and  that  the  reason  was  that  there  was  no  bread  to  be  had  in 

the  town. 

"In  that  case,"  said  the  Consul-General,  "you  must  let 
all  these  prisoners  out." 

"  But  if  I  let  them  out,"  said  the  Governor,  "the  Moham- 
medans will  kill  the  Christians." 

Finally  it  was  settled  that  the  prisoners  should  be  let  out 
a  few  at  a  time,  the  Christians  first,  and  the  Mohammedans 
afterwards,  through  a  hedge  of  soldiers  ;  and  this  was  accom- 
plished successfully.  M.  Kalnikoff  told  me  that  among  the 
prisoners  were  many  people  he  knew. 

Then  came  the  question  of  giving  up  the  town  to  the  Servians 
without  incurring  a  massacre.  I  am  not  certain  of  the  chrono- 
logy of  the  events,  and  all  this  was  told  me  in  one  hurried  and 
interrupted  interview,  but  the  Vali  took  the  matter  in  hand, 
and  as  he  was  driving  to  the  Russian  Consulate  a  man  in  the 
crowd  shot  him  through  the  arm  and  killed  the  coachman. 
This  man  was  said  to  be  mad. 

In  the  meantime,  the  various  Consulates  were  crowded  with 
refugees,  and  in  the  French  Consulate  a  Turkish  officer  fainted 
from  apprehension,  and  another  officer  insisted  on  disguising 
himself  as  a  kavass.  The  Servians,  who  were  outside  the  city, 
at  some  considerable  distance,  thought  that  the  Turks  meant 
to  offer  further  resistance  in  the  town. 

It  was  arranged  that  the  various  Consuls  and  the  Vali  (in 
their  uniforms)  should  set  out  for  the  Servian  headquarters  and 
deliver  up  the  town.  This  was  done.  They  drove  out  until 
they  met  Servian  troops.  Then  they  were  blindfolded  and 
marched  between  a  cordon  of  soldiers  through  the  deep  mud 
until  they  reached  those  in  authority.  They  explained  matters, 
and  the  Servian  cavalry  rode  into  the  town,  just  in  time  to 
prevent  a  massacre  of  the  Christian  population.  As  it  was, 
the  Albanians  had  already  done  a  good  deal  of  looting.  That 
there  was  no  fighting  in  the  town,  and  consequently  do  mas- 
sacre, was  probably  due  to  the  prompt  action  of  the  Vali. 

When  the  Turkish  and  Albanian  soldiers  retired  south  from 
Kumanovo  they  were  apparently  completely  panic-stricken. 
At  Uskub,  horses  belonging  to  batteries  were  put  in  trains,  while 


416  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

the  guns  were  left  behind.  There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that 
the  troops  massacred  any  Christians  they  came  across.  At  the 
military  hospital  at  Nish  I  saw  a  woman  who  was  terribly  cut 
and  mutilated.  She  told  the  following  story :  Her  house,  in 
which  were  her  husband,  her  brother,  his  son-in-law,  and  her 
two  sons,  was  suddenly  occupied  by  Arnaut  refugees.  These 
were  Albanians  from  the  north,  who  were  fighting  with  the 
Turks.  The  Arnauts  demanded  weapons,  which  they  were 
given.  They  then  set  fire  to  the  house,  killed  the  woman's 
husband  and  everyone  else  who  was  there,  and  no  doubt  thought 
that  they  had  killed  her  also.  But  she  was  found  still  breathing, 
and  taken  to  the  hospital.  The  doctor  said  that  she  might 
recover.  Stories  such  as  these,  and  far  worse,  one  heard  on  all 
sides.  The  Arnauts  were  an  absolutely  uncompromising  people. 
They  gave  and  expected  no  quarter.  In  the  hospitals  they 
bit  the  doctors  who  tried  to  help  them.  They  fought  and  struck 
as  long  as  there  was  a  breath  left  in  their  bodies. 

At  the  military  hospital  of  Nish  I  saw  many  of  the 
wounded.  The  wounds  inflicted  by  bullets  were  clean,  and 
the  doctors  said  that  they  were  such  that  the  wounded  either 
recovered  and  were  up  and  about  in  a  week,  or  else  they  died. 
There  were  cases  of  tetanus,  and  I  saw  many  men  who  had 
received  severe  bayonet  wounds  and  fractures  at  the  battle  of 
Perlepe,  where  some  of  the  severest  fighting  had  taken  place. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  battle  somebody  on  the  Servian 
side  must  have  blundered.  A  regiment  was  advancing,  expect- 
ing to  meet  reinforcements  on  both  sides.  In  front  of  them,  on 
a  hill,  they  saw  what  they  took  to  be  their  own  men,  and  halted. 
Immediately  a  hot  fire  rained  on  them  from  all  sides.  The 
men  they  had  seen  were  not  their  own  men  but  Turks.  The 
Servians  had  to  get  away  as  fast  as  ever  they  could  go,  otherwise 
they  would  have  been  surrounded  ;  as  it  was,  they  incurred 
severe  losses. 

You  had  only  to  be  a  day  in  Servia  to  realise  the  spirit  of  the 
people.  They  were  full  of  a  concentrated  fire  of  patriotism. 
The  war  to  them  was  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  They 
regarded  their  access  to  the  sea  as  a  question  of  life  and  death 
to  their  country.  They  had  been  the  driving  power  in  the  war. 
They  had  had  to  make  the  greater  sacrifices ;  and  the  part 
they  had  played  certainly  was  neither  realised  nor  appreci- 
ated.    The  Servians  were  less  reserved  than  the  Bulgarians, 


THE  BALKAN  WAR,   1912  417 

but  they  had  the  same  singleness  of  purpose  and  the  same 
power  of  cleaving  fast  to  one  great  idea. 

I  only  spent  four  or  five  days  at  Uskub,  and  as  there  seemed 
to  be  no  chance  of  getting  within  range  of  any  fighting,  I 
went  back  to  Sofia.  I  stopped  on  the  way  to  Nish,  where  I 
visited  the  military  hospital,  and  there  I  m«t  once  more  the 
Servian  poet,  and  received  my  lost  trunk  from  his  hands.  Just 
outside  the  Servian  hospital  there  was  a  small  church.  This 
church  was  originally  a  monument  built  by  the  Turks  to 
celebrate  the  taking  of  Nish,  and  its  architecture  was  designed 
to  discourage  the  Servians  from  ever  rising  against  them 
again,  for  the  walls  were  made  almost  entirely  of  the  skulls 
of  massacred  Servians. 


27 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE 

(1912) 

AS  soon  as  I  got  back  to  Sofia  I  found  that  there  would  be 
nothing  of  interest  for  me  to  do  or  see  there,  and  no 
chance  of  getting  to  the  Bulgarian  front.  I  might 
perhaps  have  got  to  Headquarters,  but  that  would  have  been 
of  little  use,  and  the  Times,  for  whom  I  was  writing,  already 
had  one  correspondent  with  the  Bulgarian  army.  So  I  settled 
to  go  to  Constantinople  via  Bucharest. 

I  spent  a  night  at  Bucharest,  and  I  arrived  at  Constantinople 
on  a  drizzly,  damp,  autumn  day  in  November. 

Many  people  have  recorded  the  melancholy  they  have 
felt  on  arriving  at  Constantinople  for  the  first  time,  especi- 
ally in  the  autumn,  under  a  grey  sky,  when  the  kaleidoscopic, 
opalescent  city  loses  its  radiance,  suffers  eclipse,  and  seems 
to  wallow  in  greyness,  sadness,  dirt,  and  squalor.  A  man 
arriving  at  Constantinople  on  November  19,  1912,  would  have 
received  this  melancholy  impression  at  its  very  intensest.  The 
skies  were  grey,  the  air  was  damp,  and  the  streets  looked 
more  than  usually  squalid  and  dishevelled.  But  in  addition  to 
this,  there  was  in  the  air  a  feeling  of  great  gloom,  which  was 
intensified  by  the  chattering  crowds  in  Pera,  laughing  and 
making  fun  of  the  Turkish  reverses,  by  the  chirping  women  at 
the  balconies,  watching  the  stragglers  and  the  wounded  coming 
back  from  the  front,  and  listening,  in  case  they  might  hear  the 
enemy  sullenly  firing.  In  the  city  you  felt  that  every  Turk, 
sublimely  resigned  as  ever,  and  superficially,  at  least,  utterly 
expressionless  and  indifferent  as  usual,  was  walking  about  with 
a  heavy  heart,  and  probably  every  thinking  Turk  was  feeling 
bitterly  that  the  disasters  which  had  come  were  due  to  the 
criminal  folly  of  a  band  of  alien  and  childishly  incompetent 

political   quacks.      You   felt   also    above  everything   else  the 

418 


CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE  419 

invincible  atmosphere  of  Byzantium,  which  sooner  or  later 
conquers  and  disintegrates  its  conquerors,  however  robust 
and  however  virile.  Byzantium,  having  disintegrated  two  great 
Empires,  seemed  to  be  ironically  waiting  for  a  new  prey.  One 
remembered  Bismarck's  saying  that  he  could  wish  no  greater 
misfortune  to  a  country  than  the  possession  of  Constanti- 
nople. 

But  so  quick  are  the  changes  there,  so  chameleon-like  is  the 
place,  that  all  this  was  already  out  of  date  two  days  later.  In 
three  days  the  mood  of  the  city  completely  changed  :  people 
began  to  talk  of  the  enemy  being  driven  right  back  to  Sofia  ; 
the  feast  of  Bairam  was  celebrated  ;  the  streets  were  decked 
with  flags  ;  the  men-of-war  were  dressed  ;  and,  in  the  soft 
autumnal  sunshine,  the  city  glowed  once  more  in  its  ethereal 
coat  of  many  colours. 

The  stories  of  the  cholera,  people  said,  had  been  grossly 
exaggerated  ;  8000  Bulgarians  had  been  taken  prisoners  (800 
was  the  subsequent  figure,  some  people  said  three,  some 
people  said  one).  Cholera  was  raging  in  the  enemy's  lines.  New 
troops  were  pouring  in.  The  main  enemy  would  be  repulsed  ; 
the  others  would  be  dealt  with  piecemeal,  "  as  before  "  ;  in 
fact,  everything  was  said  to  be  going  well. 

But  I  saw  a  thing  with  my  eyes,  which  threw  some  light 
on  the  conditions  under  which  the  war  was  being  carried  on. 
One  morning  I  drove  out  in  a  motor-car  with  two  companions 
and  a  Turkish  officer,  with  the  intention  of  reaching  the  Tchat- 
aldja  lines.  Until  that  day  people  had  been  able  to  reach  the 
lines  in  motor-cars.  Probably  too  many  people  had  done  this  ; 
and  most  properly  an  order  had  been  issued  to  put  a  stop  to  the 
flood  of  visitors.  In  spite  of  the  presence  of  a  Turkish  officer 
with  us  we  could  not  get  beyond  the  village  of  Kutchuk  Tchek- 
medche,  which  is  right  on  the  Sea  of  Marmora.  Not  far  from 
the  village,  and  separated  from  it  by  a  small  river,  is  a  railway 
station,  and  as  we  drove  past  the  bank  of  the  railway  line  wc 
noticed  several  dead  men  lying  on  the  bank.  The  station  was 
being  disinfected.  We  stopped  by  the  sandy  beach  to  have 
luncheon,  and  before  we  had  finished  a  cart  passed  us  with  more 
dead  in  it.  We  drove  back  through  San  Stefano.  We  entered 
through  a  gate  and  drove  down  the  suburb,  where,  bounded  on 
one  side  by  a  railway  embankment,  and  on  the  other  hand  by  a 
wall,  there  was  a  large  empty  space  intersected  by  the  road. 


420  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

Beyond  this  were  the  houses  of  San  Stefano.  It  was  in  this 
space  that  we  were  met  by  the  most  gruesome  and  terrible  sight 
I  have  ever  seen  ;  worse  than  any  battlefield  or  the  sight  of 
wounded  men.  This  plot  of  ground  was  littered  with  dead  and 
dying  men.  The  ground  itself  was  strewn  with  rags,  rubbish, 
and  filth  of  every  kind,  and  everywhere,  under  the  wall,  on  the 
grass,  by  the  edge  of  the  road,  and  on  the  road,  were  men  in 
every  phase  and  stage  of  cholera. 

There  was  nobody  to  help  them  ;  nobody  to  look  after  them  ; 
nothing  to  be  done  for  them.  Many  of  them  were  dead,  and 
lay  like  terrible  black  waxworks  in  contorted  shapes.  Others 
were  moving  and  struggling,  and  others  again  were  just  gasping 
out  the  last  flicker  of  life.  One  man  was  making  a  last  effort  to 
grasp  a  gourd.  And  in  the  middle  of  this  there  were  other 
soldiers,  sitting  patiently  waiting  and  eating  bread  under  the 
walls  of  the  houses.  There  was  not  a  sound,  not  a  murmur. 
Imagine  a  crowd  of  holiday-makers  at  Hampstead  Heath 
suddenly  stricken  by  plague,  and  you  will  have  some  idea  of 
this  terrible  sight.  Imagine  one  of  Gustave  Dore's  illustra- 
tions to  Dante's  "  Inferno  "  made  into  a  tableau  vivant  by  some 
unscrupulous  and  decadent  artist.  Imagine  the  woodcuts  in 
old  Bibles  of  the  Children  of  Israel  stricken  in  the  desert  and 
uplifting  their  helpless  hands  to  the  Brazen  Serpent.  Deserted, 
helpless,  and  hopeless,  this  mass  of  men  lay  like  a  heap  of  half- 
crushed  worms,  to  suffer  and  to  die  amidst  indescribable  filth, 
and  this  only  seven  miles  from  the  capital,  where  the  nurses 
were  not  allowed  to  get  patients  !  Soon  after  I  saw  this  grisly 
sight  I  met  Mr.  Philip,  First  Secretary  of  the  U.S.A.  Embassy, 
at  the  Club.  He  told  me  he  had  been  to  San  Stefano,  and  that 
he  and  a  U.S.A.  doctor,  Major  Ford,  were  trying  to  do  something 
to  relieve  the  people  who  were  suffering  from  cholera.  Would 
I  come  and  help  them  ? 

The  next  day  I  went  to  San  Stefano. 

San  Stefano  is  a  small  suburb  of  Constantinople  whose 
name,  as  we  all  know,  has  been  written  in  history.  Possibly 
some  day  Clapham  Junction  will  be  equally  famous  if  there  is 
ever  a  Treaty  of  Clapham,  subsequently  ratified  by  the  Powers 
at  a  Congress  of  Constantinople  or  Delhi.  It  contains  a  number 
of  elegant  whitewashed  and  two-storied  houses,  inhabited  by 
the  well-to-do  of  Constantinople  during  the  summer  months. 
San  Stefano — why  or  how  I  know  not — became  during  the  war 


CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE  421 

one  of  the  smaller  centres  of  the  sick — in  other  words,  a  ch<  I 
camp. 

San  Stefano,  at  the  time  of  my  visit,  was  entirely  deserted  ; 
the  elegant  summer  "residences'"  empty.  The  streets  a 
silent.  Y<ui  could  reach  San  Stefano  from  Constantinople 
either  by  steamer,  which  took  a  little  over  an  hour  and  a  half  ; 
or  by  train,  which  took  an  hour  (but  then-  were  pru<  tit  ally  no 
trains  running)  ;  or  in  a  carriage,  which  took  two  hours  and 
a  half.  The  whole  place  was  lifeless.  Only  on  the  quay, 
porters  and  Red  Crescent  orderlies  dealt  with  great  bales  ol 
baggage,  and  every  now  and  then  in  the  silent  street  you  heard 
the  tinkling,  stale  music  of  a  faded  pianoforte  winch  played  an 
old-fashioned — not  an  old — tune.  I  wondered,  when  I  heard 
this  music,  who  in  the  world  could  be  playing  the  pianoforte  in 
San  Stefano  at  such  a  moment.  I  need  hardly  say  that  the 
effect  was  not  only  melancholy  but  uncanny  ;  for  what  is 
there  sadder  in  the  world  than  out-of-date  music  played  on 
an  exhausted  and  wheezy  instrument  ? 

At  the  quay  a  line  of  houses  fronted  the  sea.  You  then 
turned  up  a  muddy  side  street  and  you  came  to  a  small  square, 
where  there  were  a  few  shops  and  a  few  cafes.  In  the  cafes, 
which  were  owned  by  Greeks,  people  were  drinking  colt 
The  shops  were  trading  in  articles  which  they  have  brought  from 
the  bazaars  and  which  they  thought  might  be  of  use  to  the 
cholera  patients.  A  little  farther  on,  beyond  the  muddy  square, 
where  a  quantity  of  horses,  donkeys,  and  mules  were  tethered 
to  the  leafless  trees,  you  came  to  a  slight  eminence  surrounded 
by  walls  and  railings.  Within  these  walls  there  was  a  small 
building  made  of  stucco,  Grecian  in  style.  It  was  the  desertt  d 
Greek  school.  This  is  the  place  where  cholera  patients  at  last 
found  shelter,  and  this  is  the  place  which  I  was  brought  to 
by  Major  Ford,  U.S.A.,  and  Mr.  Philip,  who  both  of  them 
went  to  San  Stefano  every  day. 

It  was  at  San  Stefano  t  hat  under  the  outside  wall  of  the  town, 
and  on  the  railway  embankment,  the  dead  and  dying  were  lying 
like  crushed  insects,  without  shelter,  without  food,  without 
water.  Mi^s  Alt,  a  Swiss  lady  of  over  seventy,  and  a  friend  1  t 
hers,  an  Austrian  lady,  Madame  Schneider,  heard  of  this  state 
of  things  and  seeing  that  nothing  was  being  done  for  th< 
people,  and  that  no  medical  or  other  assistance  was  allowed 
to  be  brought   them,  took  the   matter  into  their  own   1.  ; 


422  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  started  a  relief  fund  with  a  sum  of  £4,  and  did  what  they 
could  for  the  sick.  They  turned  the  deserted  Greek  school 
into  a  hospital,  and  they  were  joined  by  Mr.  Frew,  a  Scotch 
minister  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church  in  Constantinople. 
Funds  were  then  supplied  them  by  the  British  and  American 
Embassies,  and  Major  Ford  and  Mr.  Philip  joined  these  two 
ladies  and  Mr.  Frew. 

The  first  day  I  went  there,  no  other  medical  helpers  except 
these  volunteers  had  a  Turkish  sergeant  ;  but  the  day  after,  a 
Turkish  medical  officer  arrived,  and  the  whole  matter  was 
nominally  under  his  charge.  The  medical  work  of  the  place 
was  undertaken  by  Major  Ford,  and  the  commissariat  was 
managed  by  Mr.  Frew.  There  were  in  the  Greek  school  nine 
rooms  altogether.  Of  these  six  were  occupied  by  patients, 
one  formed  a  kind  of  kitchen  and  store-room,  and  two  of  the 
rooms  were  taken  over  by  the  medical  staff  of  the  Turkish  Red 
Crescent.  Besides  this  there  was  a  compound  roofed  over  in  the 
open  air,  and  there  were  a  certain  number  of  tents — a  dozen  or 
so.  In  this  house,  and  in  these  tents  there  were  at  first  thrown 
together  over  350  men,  all  in  various  stages  of  sickness.  Some 
of  them  were  in  the  last  stage  of  cholera  ;  some  of  them  had 
dysentery  ;  some  of  them  had  typhus  ;  some  were  suffering 
from  exhaustion  and  starvation,  and  the  greater  part  of  them 
were  sick. 

At  first  there  was  some  doubt  whether  the  disease  was 
cholera.  The  disease  which  was  manifest — and  terribly  mani- 
fest— did  not  include  all  the  best-known  symptoms  of  cholera. 
It  was  plain  also  that  a  great  number  of  the  soldiers  were 
suffering  simply  from  exhaustion,  exposure,  and  starvation. 
But  later  on  medical  diagnosis  was  made,  and  the  cholera 
microbe  was  discovered.  A  German  cholera  specialist  who 
came  from  Berlin,  Dr.  Geissler,  told  me  that  there  was  no 
doubt  of  the  existence  of  the  cholera  microbe.  Besides  which, 
some  of  the  symptoms  were  startlingly  different  from  those 
of  mere  dysentery.  From  the  human  point  of  view,  and  not 
from  the  scientific  point  of  view,  the  question  was  indifferent. 
The  solemn  fact  from  the  human  point  of  view  was  that  the 
Turkish  soldiers  at  San  Stefano  were  sick  and  dying  from  a 
disease  that  in  any  case  in  many  points  resembled  cholera,  and 
that  others  were  dying  from  what  was  indistinguishable  from 
cholera  in  its  outward  manifestations.     Every  day  and  every 


CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE  423 

night  so  many  soldiers  died,  but  less  and  less  as  the  days  went 
on.  One  night  thirty  died  ;  another  night  fifteen  ;  another 
night  ten  ;  and  so  on. 

I  have  called  the  Greek  school  a  hospital,  but  when  you 
think  of  a  hospital  you  call  up  the  vision  of  all  the  luxury  of 
modern  science — of  clean  beds,  <>f  white  sheets,  of  deft  and 
skilful  nurses,  of  supplies  of  sterilised  water,  antisepi 
lemonade,  baths,  quiet,  space,  and  fresh  and  clean  air.  Here 
there  were  no  such  appliances,  and  no  such  things.  There 
were  no  beds  ;  there  were  mattresses  on  the  dusty  and  dirty 
floors.  The  rooms  were  crowded  to  overflowing.  There  was 
no  means  of  washing  or  dressing  the  patients.  It  is  difficult 
to  convey  to  those  who  never  saw  it  the  impression  made  by 
the  first  sight  of  the  rooms  in  the  Greek  school  where  the  sick 
were  lying.  Some  of  the  details  are  too  horrible  to  write.  It 
is  enough  to  say  that  during  the  first  few  days  after  the  sick 
were  put  into  the  Greek  school,  the  rooms  were  packed  and 
crowded  with  human  beings,  some  of  them  in  agony  and  all  of 
them  in  extreme  distress.  They  lay  on  the  floor  in  rows  along 
the  walls,  with  flies  buzzing  round  them  ;  and  between  these 
rows  of  men  there  was  a  third  row  along  the  middle  of  the  room. 
They  lay  across  the  doors,  so  that  anybody  opening  a  door  in 
a  hurry  and  walking  carelessly  into  the  room  trod  on  a  sick 
man.  They  were  weak  from  starvation.  They  were  one  and 
all  of  them  parched,  groaning  and  moaning,  with  a  torturing 
and  unquenchable  thirst.  They  were  suffering  from  many 
other  diseases  besides  cholera.  One  man  had  got  mumps. 
Many  of  the  soldiers  had  gangrened  feet  and  legs,  all  blue,  stiff 
and  rotten,  as  if  they  had  been  frost-bitten.  These  soldiers 
had  either  to  have  their  limbs  amputated  or  to  die — and  there  is 
no  future  for  an  amputated  Turk.  There  is  nothing  for  him  to 
do  save  to  beg.  Some  of  them  had  swellings  and  sores  and  holes 
in  their  limbs  and  in  their  faces,  and  although  most  of  them 
were  wounded,  all  of  them  were  unwashed  and  many  of  them 
covered  with  vermin.  Mosl  of  them  besides  their  overcoats 
and  their  puttees  had  practically  no  clothes  at  all.  Their 
underclothes  were  in  rags,  and  caked  with  dirt.  The  sick  were 
all  soldiers  ;  most  of  them  were  Turks  ;  some  of  them  were 
Greeks. 

In  such  a  place  any  complicated  nursing  was  out  of  the 
question.     The  main  duties  of  those  who  attempted  t<>  relieve 


424  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

the  sick  consisted  in  bringing  warm  clothes  and  covering  to  those 
who  were  in  rags  and  shivering ;  soup  to  those  who  were  faint 
and  exhausted,  and  water  to  those  who  were  crying  for  it  ;  and 
during  the  first  few  days  at  San  Stefano  all  the  sick  were  crying 
for  water,  and  crying  for  it  all  day  and  all  night  long.  You 
could  not  go  into  any  of  the  rooms  without  hearing  a  piteous 
chorus  of  "  Doctor  Effendi,  Doctor  Bey,  sou,  sou  "  (sou  is  the 
Turkish  for  water).  Luckily  the  water  supply  was  good. 
There  was  a  clean  spring  not  far  from  the  school,  and  water 
mixed  with  disinfectant  could  be  given  to  the  sick.  The  sick 
and  the  well  at  first  were  crowded  together  absolutely  indis- 
criminately. A  man  who  had  nothing  the  matter  with  him 
besides  hunger  and  faintness  would  be  next  to  a  man  who  was 
already  rigid  and  turning  grey  in  the  last  comatose  stage  of 
cholera. 

During  the  first  week  of  this  desperate  state  of  things  Miss 
Alt  and  Madame  Schneider  worked  like  slaves.  They  spent  the 
whole  day,  and  very  often  the  whole  night,  in  bringing  clothes 
to  the  ragged,  food  to  the  hungry,  and  water  to  the  thirsty. 
Mr.  Frew  managed  the  whole  commissariat  and  the  food  supply, 
and  he  managed  it  with  positive  genius.  He  smoothed  over 
difficulties,  he  razed  obstacles,  and  in  all  the  creaking  joints 
of  the  difficult  machinery  he  poured  the  inestimable  oil  of  his 
cheerfulness,  his  good-humour,  and  his  kindness.  Major  Ford 
acted  with  an  equal  energy  in  taking  over  the  medical  side  of 
the  school  and  in  sorting  from  the  heaped-up  sick  those  who 
were  less  ill,  and  separating  them  from  those  who  were  danger- 
ously ill  ;  and  in  this  task  he  had  the  help  of  Mr.  Philip. 
This  sounds  a  simple  thing  to  say.  It  was  in  practice  and  in  fact 
incredibly  difficult.  During  the  first  days  there  were  scarcely 
any  orderlies  at  all  and  few  soldiers,  and  it  was  a  desperately 
slow  and  difficult  task  to  get  people  carried  from  one  place  to 
another.  One  afternoon,  which  I  shall  never  forget  as  long  as 
I  live,  Major  Ford  undertook  in  one  of  the  crowded  rooms  to 
shift  temporarily  all  the  sick  from  one  side  of  the  room  to  the 
other  side  of  it,  and  while  they  were  there  to  lay  down  a 
clean  piece  of  oilcloth.  This  was  immensely  difficult.  The 
patients,  of  course,  were  unwilling  to  move.  First  of  all  it  had 
to  be  explained  to  them  that  the  thing  was  not  a  game,  and  that 
it  would  be  to  their  ultimate  advantage  ;  and  then  they  had  to 
be  bribed  from  one  side  of  the  room  to  the  other  with  baits 


CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE  425 

of  lemons  and  cigarettes.  Nevertheless,  Major  Ford  managed 
to  do  it  and  get  down  a  clean  piece  of  oilcloth.  When  1 
had  spent  the  whole  day  in  this  place,  and  one  had  seen  people 
like  Miss  Alt,  Madame  Schneider,  Major  Ford,  and  Mi.  Frew 
working  like  slaves  from  morning  till  night,  one  still  had  the 
feeling  nothing  had  been  done  at  all  compared  with  what 
remained  undone,  so  overwhelming  were  the  odds.  And  yet  at 
the  end  of  one  week  there  was  a  vast  change  for  the  better  in 
the  whole  situation. 

Great  as  was  the  di>tress  of  the  wretched  victims,  they  were 
sublime  in  their  resignation.  They  consented,  like  Job,  in 
what  was  worse  than  dust  and  ashes,  to  the  working  of  the 
Divine  will.  They  most  of  them  had  military  water-bottles  ; 
they  used  to  implore  to  have  these  bottles  filled  ;  and  when 
they  were  filled — thirsty  as  they  were — they  would  not  drink 
all  the  water,  but  they  kept  a  little  back  in  order  to  perfoim 
the  ablutions  which  the  Mohammedan  religion  ordains  should 
accompany  the  prayers  of  the  faithful.  Even  in  their  agony 
the  Turks  never  lost  one  particle  of  their  dignity,  and  never 
for  one  moment  forgot  their  perfect  manners.  They  died  as 
they  lived — like  the  Nature's  noblemen  they  are — alv. 
acknowledging  every  assistance  ;  and  when  they  refused  a 
gift  or  an  offer  they  put  into  the  refusal  the  graciousness  of 
an  acceptance. 

Only  those  who  have  been  to  Turkey  can  have  any  idea  of 
the  politeness,  the  innate  folitesse  du  cceur,  of  the  Turk.  One 
day  when  I  was  coming  back  from  San  Stefano  on  board  a  Turk^  h 
Government  launch,  and  together  with  an  English  officer  I  was 
talking  to  the  Turkish  naval  officer  who  was  in  command  of 
the  launch,  the  Englishman  offered  a  cigarette  to  the  Turkish 
officer.  He  accepted  it  and  lit  it.  The  Englishman  then 
offered  one  to  the  officer's  younger  brother,  who  was  there  also. 
"  He  does  not  smoke,"  said  the  officer.  Then  he  added,  after 
a  pause,  "I  do  not  cither."  "He  has  lit  and  smoked  tl 
cigarette  so  as  not  to  offend  me,"  said  the  Englishman  aside 
to  me.     This  i>  typical  of  the  kind  of  polit*  the  Turks 

show.     Equally  polite  were  the  soldiers  who  were  dying  oi  a 
horrible  disease  amid>t   awful   conditions.     They  Dever  forgot 
their  manners.    They  were  childlike  and  infinitely  path'  I 
in  their  wants.     One  man  in  a  tent  where  some  of  the  con- 
valesceut  were  asM'inbled  cried  out  in  Turkish  his  need— which 


426  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

was  interpreted  to  me  by  a  Greek.  He  wanted  a  candle,  by 
which  a  man,  he  said,  might  tell  stories  to  the  others  ;  for,  he 
added,  it  was  impossible  for  a  story-teller  to  tell  stories  in  the 
dark  ;  the  audience  could  not  see  his  face.  There  was  no  candle 
in  the  place,  but  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  that  I  stole  a  small 
lamp  and  gave  it  to  this  man  to  afford  illumination  to  that 
story-telling.  Another  man  wanted  a  lemon.  There  were 
then  no  lemons.  The  man  produced  a  five-piastre  piece  (a 
franc,  nearly  a  shilling).  This  was  a  large  fortune  to  him,  but 
he  offered  it  to  me  if  I  could  get  him  a  lemon.  One  soldier 
refused  either  to  eat  or  to  drink.  He  would  not  touch  either 
soup  or  milk  or  water  or  sour  milk,  which  was  the  favourite 
dish  of  the  soldiers  there,  and  which,  being  a  national  dish  of 
Turkey,  could  be  supplied  to  them  in  great  quantities.  He 
kept  on  reiterating  one  word.  It  turned  out  to  mean  prune 
soup.  He  was  hankering  after  prune  soup.  He  wanted  prune 
soup  and  nothing  else.  Another  man  wanted  a  pencil  above 
all  things,  which  was  duly  given  him. 

The  gratitude  of  these  poor  people  to  anyone  who  did  any 
little  thing  for  them  was  immense.  "  Allah  will  restore  to  you 
everything  you  have  done  for  us  a  hundredfold,"  they  would 
say.  Or  again  :  "  You  are  more  than  a  doctor  to  us  ;  you  are 
a  friend."  One  day  Mr.  Philip  brought  some  flowers  to  the 
sick  soldiers.  Their  delight  knew  no  bounds.  The  Turks 
love  flowers.  They  treasured  them.  They  even  sacrificed 
their  water-bottles — and  every  drop  of  water  was  precious 
to  them — to  keep  the  flowers  fresh  a  little  longer. 

The  curious  resignation  of  the  Turkish  character  used  often 
to  be  manifest  in  a  striking  way,  in  little  matters.  Here  is 
an  instance  which  struck  me.  When  lemons  or  cigarettes,  or 
indeed  anything  else,  were  distributed  to  the  patients,  one 
cigarette  or  one  lemon,  as  the  case  might  be,  was  given  to 
each  man  all  round  the  room.  Sometimes  a  patient  would  ask 
for  two,  and  his  demand  used  to  arouse  the  indignation  of  his 
fellow-patients,  which  they  often  expressed  in  violent  terms. 
Nevertheless,  he  would  persist  in  his  demand,  and  would  keep 
on  saying  :  "  Give  me  two,  Doctor,  give  me  two  "  ;  and  finally 
one  of  the  Turkish  orderlies  present  would  nod  his  head  and 
say :  "  Yes,  give  him  two  "  ;  and  then  he  would  be  given  two, 
and  the  other  patients,  instead  of  grumbling,  would  acquiesce 
in  the  fait  accompli  and  say :  "  Yes,  yes,  give  him  two."     It 


CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE  427 

was  curious  that  they  never  dreamt  of  all  of  them  asking  for 
two  of  any  one  thing  ;  but  the  importunate  were  acknowledged 
to  be  privileged,  if  they  were  sufficiently  importunate.  One 
morning,  when  lemons  were  being  distributed  to  the  soldiers, 
each  man  receiving  a  lemon  apiece,  one,  who  like  the  rest 
wore  a  fez,  said  in  a  whisper  to  the  distributor:  "  ScLae  /xot  Svo 
cTyxui  Xpumoros  "  ("  Give  me  two.  I  am  a  Christian  ").  There 
were  several  Greeks  among  the  sick,  and  I  regret  to  say  that 
when  they  were  given  shirts  they  frequently  sold  them  to  their 
neighbours,  and  then  appeared  naked  the  next  day  and  asked  for 
another. 

Miss  Alt's  plan  was  to  give  to  all  who  asked — the  undeserving 
as  well  as  the  deserving — and  the  plan  worked  out  quite  well 
in  the  long  run,  for,  as  she  said,  they  were  none  of  them  too 
well  off. 

After  the  first  few  days  the  Turkish  medical  authorities 
took  steps  in  the  matter  of  the  Greek  school.  During  the 
first  week  of  the  work  there,  a  British  unit  of  the  Turkish  Red 
Crescent  arrived  from  England  under  the  sound  direction  of  Dr. 
Baines,  and  a  further  recruit  joined  the  helpers  in  the  person 
of  Lady  Westmacott,  who  brought  with  her  an  energetic,  clever 
and  untiring  Russian  doctor.  Although  it  was  impossible 
to  persuade  any  of  the  owners  of  the  houses  at  San  Stefan*  > 
to  allow  them  to  be  used  as  hospitals,  a  house  was  found  for 
Dr.  Baines'  unit.  He  soon  set  up  a  lot  of  tents,  withdrew 
from  the  overcrowded  school  a  number  of  the  patients,  and 
was  able  to  do  excellent  work.  But  he  received  this  house  for 
himself  and  his  staff  on  the  express  condition  that  no  sick  of 
any  kind  whatsoever,  and  not  even  the  owner's  father,  should 
be  allowed  to  go  into  it.  Later  on,  a  unit  of  the  Egyptian 
Red  Crescent  arrived,  with  a  staff  of  German  doctors  and  an 
Englishman.  Wooden  barracks  were  built  for  them  in  the  plain 
outside  the  Greek  school,  fronting  the  sea. 

Hard  words  were  said  about  the  Turkish  medical  auth- 
orities with  regard  to  this  matter;  and  it  is,  of  course,  < 
for  people  who  know  nothing  about  the  local  conditions 
and  the  local  difficulties  to  pass  sweeping  judgments.  On 
the  whole,  I  was  told  by  competent  authorities,  the  Turkish 
Red  Crescent  did  exceedingly  well  in  dealing  with  the  wounded 
and  the  sick  in  the  large  field  of  their  operations.  But  an 
epidemic  of  cholera  such  as  that  which  I  have  described  seemed 


428  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

to  paralyse  them.  It  took  the  Turks  unprepared.  Steps  were 
taken,  but  tardily  ;  and  to  Western  minds  the  procedure  seemed 
incredibly  and  criminally  slow  ;  yet  in  the  East  it  is  impossible 
to  do  things  in  a  hurry,  and  if  you  try  to  hustle,  you  will  find  that 
there  will  be  less  speed  in  the  long  run.  If  you  consider  all 
these  things,  the  Turkish  medical  authorities,  and  especially 
the  Turkish  doctor  in  charge  at  San  Stefano,  did  their  best 
when  once  they  started  to  work.  But  when  the  appalling 
situation  arose  at  San  Stefano,  when  the  cholera  victims  were 
lying  like  flies  on  the  railway  embankment,  they  took  no 
steps  to  face  the  situation  until  they  were  stimulated  to  do 
so  by  the  example  of  Miss  Alt  and  Madame  Schneider  and 
the  pressure  of  foreign  opinion.  This  was  partly  due  to  the 
fatalism  of  their  outlook,  to  the  resignation  of  their  tempera- 
ment, and  partly  to  the  disorder  which  was  rife  throughout 
their  military  organisation.  As  to  San  Stefano,  which  is  the 
small  area  I  had  the  opportunity  of  observing  personally,  had 
it  not  been  for  the  spontaneous  efforts  of  Miss  Alt,  Madame 
Schneider,  and  Mr.  Frew,  the  Turkish  and  Greek  soldiers  who 
were  shut  up  in  the  cholera  camp,  without  any  possibility 
of  egress,  would  have  died  of  hunger  and  thirst.  It  must  be 
remembered,  as  I  have  said  before,  that  among  the  cholera 
patients  there  were  a  great  number  of  soldiers  who  were 
suffering  simply  and  solely  from  exhaustion  and  starvation. 

After  the  arrival  of  the  British  unit  of  the  Red  Crescent, 
and  that  of  the  Egyptian  Red  Crescent,  matters  were  got  into 
shape  at  San  Stefano,  and  there  was  no  longer  need  of  volunteers. 
The  worst  cases  had  died.  Those  who  had  been  suffering  from 
exhaustion  and  starvation  recovered  and  were  sent  home. 
Those  who  had  mild  attacks  of  cholera  and  dysentery  became 
convalescent,  and  were  moved  into  the  tents.  Rooms  were 
cleared  out  for  the  worst  cases,  and  it  was  possible  to  introduce 
beds,  and  to  clear  up  matters.  What  was  at  the  beginning 
an  ante-chamber  to  Hell  was  later,  I  believe,  converted  into  a 
clean  hospital  with  all  the  necessary  appliances  and  attendants. 

That  this  was  done  was  due  to  the  initial  enterprise  of  Miss 
Alt  and  Madame  Schneider.  They  were  the  leading  spirits 
and  the  soul  of  this  undertaking.  Their  work  was  untiring  and 
incessant.  To  have  seen  Miss  Alt  at  work  was  a  rare  privilege. 
Impervious  to  disgust,  but  saturated  with  pity,  overflowing  with 
love  and  radiating  charity,  she  threaded  her  way,  bowed  with 


CONSTANTINOPLE  ONCE  MORE  429 

age  and  with  silvered  hair,  like  a  good  angel  or  a  kind  fairy, 
from  tent  to  tent,  from  room  to  room,  laden  with  gifts  ;  un- 
conscious of  the  filth,  disdainful  of  the  stench,  Mind  to  tin- 
hideous  sights,  she  went  her  way,  giving  with  both  hands, 
helping  with  her  arms,  cheering  with  bet  speech,  and  healing 
with  her  smile.  Ifiss  Alt  came  to  San  Stefano  like  an  angel 
to  Hell,  and  she  could  have  said,  like  Beatrice  : 

"  Io  son  fatta  da  Dio,  sua  merce,  tale, 
Che  la  vostra  miseria  non  mi  tange, 
Ne  liamma  d'  esto  incendio  non  m'  assalc." 


CHAPTER    XXIV 
THE  FASCINATION  OF  RUSSIA 

FROM  1912  until  the  summer  of  1914  I  spent  the  greater 
part  of  the  year  in  Russia.  I  was  no  longer  doing 
journalistic  work,  but  I  was  still  writing  books  on 
Russian  life  and  literature.  The  longer  I  stayed  in  Russia, 
the  more  deeply  I  felt  the  fascination  of  the  country  and 
the  people.  In  one  of  his  books  Gogol  has  a  passage 
apostrophising  his  country  from  exile,  and  asking  her  the 
secret  of  her  fascination.  "  What  is,"  he  says,  "  the 
inscrutable  power  which  lies  hidden  in  you  ?  Why  does 
your  aching,  melancholy  song  echo  forever  in  my  ears  ? 
Russia,  what  do  you  want  of  me  ?  What  is  there  between 
you  and  me  ?  " 

The  question  has  often  been  repeated,  not  only  by  Russians 
in  exile,  but  by  foreigners  who  have  lived  in  Russia,  and  I 
have  often  found  myself  asking  it.  The  country  has 
little  obvious  glamour  and  attraction.  In  Russia,  as  Gogol 
says,  the  wonders  of  Nature  are  not  made  more  wonderful 
by  man  ;  there  are  no  spots  where  Nature,  art,  and  time 
combine  to  take  the  heart  with  beauty;  where  association, 
and  even  decay  are  indistinguishabty  mingled  ;  and  Nature  is 
not  only  beautiful  but  picturesque ;  where  time  has  worked 
magic  on  man's  handiwork,  and  history  has  left  behind  a 
host  of  phantoms. 

There  are  many  such  places  in  France  and  in  England, 

in  Italy,  Spain,  and  Greece,  but  not  in  Russia.     Russia  is  a 

country  of  colonists,  where  life  has  been  a  perpetual  struggle 

against  the  inclemency  of  the  climate,  and  where  the  political 

history  is  the  record  of  a  desperate  battle  against  adverse 

circumstances.     Russia's  oldest   city  was  sacked  and  burnt 

just  at  the  moment  when  it  was  beginning  to  flourish  ;    her 

first  capital  was  destroyed  by  fire  in  1812  ;   her  second  capital 

430 


THE  FASCINATION  OF  RUSSIA  431 

dates  from  the  seventeenth  century;  stone  houses  are  rare 
in  the  country,  and  the  wooden  houses  are  frequently  de- 
stroyed by  fire.  It  is  a  country  of  long  winters  and  fierce 
summers,  of  rolling  plains,  uninterrupted  by  mountains  and 
unvariegated  by  valleys. 

But  the  charm  is  there.  It  is  felt  by  people  of  different 
nationalities  and  races  ;  it  is  difficult,  if  you  live  in  Russia, 
to  escape  it,  and  once  you  have  felt  it,  you  will  never  be 
quite  free  from  it.  The  melancholy  song,  which  Gogol  says 
wanders  from  sea  to  sea  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
land,  will  echo  in  your  heart  and  haunt  the  corner  of  your 
brain.  It  is  impossible  to  analyse  charm,  for  if  charm  could 
be  analysed  it  would  cease  to  exist  ;  and  it  is  difficult  to 
define  the  character  of  places  where  beauty  makes  so  little 
instantaneous  appeal,  and  where  there  is  no  playground  of 
romance,  and  few  ghosts  of  poetry  and  of  history. 

Turgeniev's  descriptions  of  the  country  give  an  idea  of 
this  peculiar  magic.  For  instance,  the  story  of  the  summer 
night,  when  on  the  plain  the  children  tell  each  other  bogy 
tales  ;  or  the  description  of  that  other  July  evening,  when 
out  of  the  twilight,  a  long  way  off  on  the  plain,  a  child's 
voice  is  heard  calling  :  "  Antropka — a — a,"  and  Antropka 
answers  :  "  Wha — a — a — a — a — at  ?  "  and  far  away  out  of 
the  immensity  comes  the  answering  voice :  "  Come  ho — ome, 
because  daddy  wants  to  whip  you." 

Those  who  travel  in  their  arm-chair  will  meet  in  Turgeniev 
with  glimpses,  episodes,  pictures,  incidents,  sayings  and 
doings,  touches  of  human  nature,  phases  of  landscape,  shades 
of  atmosphere,  which  contain  the  secret  and  the  charm  of 
Russia.  All  who  have  travelled  in  Russia  not  only  recognise 
the  truth  of  his  pictures,  but  agree  that  the  incidents  which 
he  records  with  incomparable  art  are  a  common  experience  to 
those  who  have  eyes  to  see.  The  picturesque  peculiar  to 
countries  rich  in  historical  traditions  is  absent  in  Russia  ;  but 
beauty  is  not  absent,  and  it  is  often  all  the  more  striking  from 
its  lack  of  obviousm 

This  was  brought  home  to  me  strongly  in  the  summer  of 
1913.  I  was  staying  in  a  small  wooden  house  in  Central 
Russia,  not  far  from  a  railway,  but  isolated  from  other  houses, 
and  at  a  fair  distance  from  a  village.  The  harvest  was  nearly 
done.     The  heat  was  sweltering.     The  country  was  parched 


432  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

and  dry.  The  walls  and  ceilings  were  black  with  flies.  One 
had  no  wish  to  venture  out  of  doors  until  the  evening. 

The  small  garden  of  the  house,  gay  with  asters  and  sweet- 
peas,  was  surrounded  by  birch  trees,  with  here  and  there  a  fir 
tree  in  their  midst.  Opposite  the  little  house,  a  broad  pathway, 
flanked  on  each  side  by  a  row  of  tall  birch  trees,  led  to  the 
margin  of  the  garden,  which  ended  in  a  steep  grass  slope, 
and  a  valley,  or  a  wooded  dip ;  and  beyond  it,  on  the  same 
level  as  the  garden,  there  was  a  pathway  half  hidden  by  trees  ; 
so  that  from  the  house,  if  you  looked  straight  in  front  of  you, 
you  saw  a  broad  path,  with  birch  trees  on  each  side  of  it, 
forming  a  proscenium  for  a  wooded  distance ;  and  if  anybody 
walked  along  the  pathway  on  the  farther  side  of  the  dip, 
although  you  saw  no  road,  you  could  see  the  figures  in  outline 
against  the  sky,  as  though  they  were  walking  across  the  back 
of  a  stage. 

Just  as  the  cool  of  the  evening  began  to  fall,  out  of  the 
distance  came  a  rhythmical  song,  ending  on  a  note  that  seemed 
to  last  for  ever,  piercingly  clear  and  clean.  The  music  came 
a  little  nearer,  and  one  could  distinguish  first  a  solo  chanting 
a  phrase,  and  then  a  chorus  taking  it  up,  and  finally,  solo  and 
chorus  became  one,  and  reached  a  climax  on  a  high  note, 
which  grew  purer  and  stronger,  and  more  and  more  long 
drawn-out,  without  any  seeming  effort,  until  it  died  away. 

The  tone  of  the  voices  was  so  high,  so  pure,  and  at  the 
same  time  so  peculiar,  strong  and  rare,  that  it  was  difficult 
at  first  to  tell  whether  the  voices  were  tenors,  sopranos,  or 
boyish  trebles.  They  were  unlike,  both  in  range  and  quality, 
the  voices  of  women  one  usually  heard  in  Russian  villages. 
The  music  drew  nearer,  and  it  filled  the  air  with  a  majestic 
calm.  Presently,  in  the  distance,  beyond  the  dip  between  the 
trees,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  natural  stage  made  by  the 
garden,  I  saw,  against  the  sky,  figures  of  women  walking  slowly 
in  the  sunset,  and  singing  as  they  walked,  carrying  their 
scythes  and  their  wooden  rakes  with  them  ;  and  once  again 
the  phrase  began  and  was  repeated  by  the  chorus  ;  and  once 
again  chorus  and  solo  melted  together  in  a  high  and  long- 
drawn-out  note,  which  seemed  to  swell  like  the  sound  of  a 
clarion,  to  grow  purer,  more  single,  stronger  and  fuller, 
till  it  ended  suddenly,  sharply,  as  a  frieze  ends.  The  song 
seemed  to  proclaim  rest  after  toil,  and  satisfaction  for  labour 


THE  FASCINATION  OF  RUSSIA  433 

accomplished.    It  was  like  a  hymn  oi  ,  .1  broad  bene- 

diction, a  grace  sung  for  the  end  of  the  day  :  the  end  of  the 
summer,  the  end  of  the  harvest.  It  .  xpn  sed  1  he  -pint  of  the 
breathless  August  evening. 

The  women  walked  past  slowly  and  disappeared  into  tin- 
trees  once  more.  The  glimpse  lasted  only  .1  moment,  but  it 
was  enough  to  start  a  long  train  of  thought  and  to  call  up 
pictures  of  rites,  ritual,  and  custom  ;  of  rustic  worship  and 
rural  festival,  of  Pagan  ceremonies  older  than  the  gods. 

As  another  verse  of  what  sounded  like  a  primeval  harvest 
hymn  began,  the  brief  glimpse  of  the  reapers,  erect  and  majestic 
in  the  dress  of  toil,  and  laden  with  the  instruments  of  the 
harvest,  the  high  quality  of  the  singing  : 

"  The  undisturbed  song  of  pure  concent," 

made  the  place  into  a  temple  of  august  and  sacred  calm  in  the 
quiet  light  of  the  evening.  The  sacerdotal  figures  that  passed 
by,  diminutive  in  the  distance,  belonged  to  an  archaic  vase 
or  frieze.  The  music  seemed  to  seal  a  sacrament,  to  be  the 
initiation  into  an  immemorial  secret,  into  some  remote  mystery 
— who  knows  ? — perhaps  the  mystery  of  Eleusis,  or  into  still 
older  secrecies  of  which  Eleusis  was  the  far-distant  offspring. 
A  window  had  been  opened  on  to  another  phase  of  time,  on 
to  another  and  a  brighter  world  ;  older  than  Virgil,  older  than 
Romulus,  older  than  Demeter — a  world  where  the  spring, 
the  summer,  and  the  autumn,  harvest -time,  and  sowing,  the 
gathering  of  fruits  and  the  vintage,  were  the  gods  ;  and  through 
this  window  came  a  gleam  from  the  golden  age,  a  breath  from 
the  morning  and  the  springtide  of  mankind. 

When  I  say  that  the  singing  called  up  thoughts  of  Greece, 
the  tiling  is  less  fantastic  than  it  seems.  In  the  first  place, 
in  the  songs  of  the  Russian  peasants,  the  Greek  modes  are 
still  in  use  :  the  Dorian,  the  hypo-Dorian,  the  Lydian,  the 
hypo-Phrygian.  "  La  musique,  telle  qu'elle  etait  pratique^ 
en  Russie  au  moyen  age  "  (writes  M.  Soubier  in  his  History 
of  Russian  Music),  "  tcnait  a  la  tradition  des  religions  et  des 
mceurs  pai'enncs."  And  in  the  secular  as  well  as  in  the  ecclesi- 
astical music  of  Russia  there  is  an  element  of  influence  which 
is  purely  Hellenic.  It  turned  out  that  the  particular  singers 
I  heard  on  that  evening  were  not  local,  but  a  guild  of  women 
reapers  who  had  come  from  the  government  of  Tula  to  work 
28 


434  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

during  the  harvest.  Their  singing,  although  the  form  and 
kind  of  song  were  familiar  to  me,  was  different  in  quality  from 
any  that  I  had  heard  before ;  and  the  impression  made  by  it 
unforgettable. 

Nature  in  Russia  is,  broadly  speaking,  monotonous  and 
uniform,  but  this  does  not  mean  that  beauty  is  rare.  Not 
only  magic  moments  occur  in  the  most  unpromising  sur- 
roundings, but  beauty  is  to  be  found  in  Russian  nature  and 
Russian  landscape  at  all  times  and  all  seasons  in  many  shapes. 

For  instance  :  a  long  drive  in  the  evening  twilight  at  harvest- 
time,  over  the  immense  hedgeless  rolling  plains,  through  stretches 
of  golden  wheat  and  rye,  variegated  with  millet,  still  green 
and  not  yet  turned  to  the  bronze  colour  it  takes  later  ;  when 
you  drive  for  miles  over  monotonous  and  yet  ever-varying 
fields,  and  when  you  see,  in  the  distance,  the  cranes,  settling 
for  a  moment,  and  then  flying  off  into  space. 

Later  in  the  twilight,  continents  of  dove-coloured  clouds 
float  in  the  east,  the  west  is  tinged  with  the  dusty  afterglow  of 
the  sunset ;  and  the  half-reaped  corn  and  the  spaces  of  stubble 
are  burnished  and  glow  in  the  heat ;  and  smouldering  fires  of 
weeds  burn  here  and  there  ;  and  as  you  reach  a  homestead,  you 
will  perhaps  see  by  the  threshing-machine,  a  crowd  of  dark  men 
and  women  still  at  their  work ;  and  in  the  glow  from  the  flame 
of  a  wooden  fire,  in  the  shadow  of  the  dusk,  the  smoke  of 
the  engine  and  the  dust  of  the  chaff,  they  have  a  Rembrandt- 
like power  ;  the  feeling  of  space,  breadth,  and  air  and  immensity 
grows  upon  one  ;  the  earth  seems  to  grow  larger,  the  sky  to 
grow  deeper,  and  the  spirit  is  lifted,  stretched,  and  magnified. 

Russian  poets  have  celebrated  more  frequently  the  spring 
and  winter — the  brief  spring  which  arrives  so  suddenly  after 
the  melting  of  the  snows,  with  the  intense  green  of  the  birch- 
trees,  the  uncrumpling  fern ;  woods  carpeted  with  lilies  of  the 
valley ;  the  lilac  bushes,  the  nightingale,  and  later  the  briar, 
which  flowers  in  profusion  ;  and  the  winter  :  the  long  drives 
in  a  sledge  under  a  leaden  sky  to  the  tinkle  of  monotonous 
bells  ;  a  whistling  blizzard  with  its  demons,  that  lead  the  horses 
astray  in  the  night ;  transparent  woods  black  against  an  immense 
whiteness  ;  or  covered  with  snow  and  frozen,  an  enchanted 
fabric  against  the  stainless  blue  ;  or,  when  after  a  night  of  thaw, 
the  brown  branches  emerge  once  more  covered  with  airy  threads 
and  sparkling  drops  of  dew. 


THE  FASCINATION  OF  RUSSIA  435 

The  sunset  and  twilight  of  the  winter  evening  after  the  fil  -t 
snow  had  fallen  in  December  used  to  be  most  beautiful.  The 
new  moon,  like  a  little  sail  on  a  cold  sea,  tinged  with  a  blu-h 
as  it  reached  the  earth,  flooded  the  snow  with  light,  and  added 
to  its  purity  ;  the  snow  had  a  blue  glint  in  it  and  showed 
up  the  wooden  houses,  the  red  roofs,  the  farm  implements 
in  a  bold  relief  ;  so  that  all  these  prosaic  objects  of  every- 
day life  assumed  a  strange  largeness  and  darkness  as  they 
loomed  between  the  earth  and  the  sky. 

What  I  used  to  enjoy  more  than  anything  in  Russia  were 
the  summer  afternoons  on  the  river  near  Sosnofka,  where  the 
flat  banks  were  covered  with  oak-trees,  ash,  willow,  and  thick 
undergrowth  ;  and  where  every  now  and  then,  perch  rose  to  the 
surface  to  catch  flies,  and  the  kingfishers  skimmed  over  the 
surface  from  reach  to  reach.  Sometimes  I  used  to  take  a  boat 
and  row  past  islands  of  rushes,  and  a  network  of  water-lilies,  to 
where  the  river  broadened  ;  and  I  reached  a  great  sheet  of  water 
flanked  by  a  weir  and  a  mill.  The  trees  were  reflected  in  the 
glassy  surface,  and  nothing  broke  the  stillness  but  the  grumbling 
of  the  mill  and  the  cries  of  the  children  bathing. 

Near  the  village,  all  through  the  summer  night  (this  was 
in  June  1914),  I  used  to  hear  song  answering  song,  and  the 
brisk  rhythm  of  the  accordion  ;  or  the  interminable  humming, 
buzzing  burden  of  the  three-stringed  balalaika  ;  verse  succeeded 
verse  of  an  apparently  tireless  song,  and  the  end  of  each  verse 
seemed  to  beget  another  and  give  a  keener  zest  to  the  next  ; 
and  the  song  waxed  faster  and  madder,  as  if  the  singer  were 
intoxicated  by  the  sound  of  his  own  music 

But  the  peculiar  manifestations  of  the  beauty  of  nature  in 
a  flat  and  uniform  country  are  not  enough  to  account  for  the 
fascination  of  Russia.  Beauty  is  a  part  of  it,  but  it  is  not 
all.  Against  these  things  in  the  other  scale  you  had  to  put 
dirt,  squalor,  misery,  slovenliness,  disorder,  and  the  uninspir- 
ing wooden  provincial  towns,  the  dusty  or  sodden  roads,  the 
frequent  grey  skies,  the  long  and  heavy  sameni 

The  advocatus  diaboli  had  a  strong  case.  He  could  have 
drawn  up  a  powerful  indictment,  nut  only  against  the  political 
conditions,  and  the  arbitrary  and  uncertain  administration, 
but  also  against  the  character  of  the  people  ;  he  could  mention 
the  moral  laxity,  the  extravagant  self-indulgence,  the  lack  of 
control,  the  jealousywhich  hounded  any  kind  of  -nperiority  ;  and 


436  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

looked  with  suspicion  on  all  that  was  original  or  distinguished  ; 
the  dead  level  of  mediocrity  ;  the  stereotyped  bureaucratic 
pattern  which  you  could  not  escape  from.  The  Russians,  he 
would  say,  had  all  the  faults  of  the  Orient  without  any  of  its 
austerer  virtues  ;  Russia,  he  would  say,  was  a  nation  of  in- 
effectual rebels  under  the  direction  of  a  band  of  corrupt  and 
time-serving  officials.  The  indictment  was  true,  but  however 
glaring  the  faults  which  Russian  moralists,  satirists,  and 
politicians  used  so  frequently  and  so  loudly  to  deplore,  the 
faults  that  used  to  make  foreigners  in  Russia  so  angry  at  times, 
they  seemed  to  me  the  negative  results  of  positive  qualities  so 
valuable  as  to  outweigh  them  altogether. 

During  my  stays  in  Russia  I  saw  some  of  the  worst  as  well 
as  some  of  the  best  aspects  of  the  country  and  its  people. 
The  net  result  of  all  I  saw  and  all  I  experienced  was  the  sense 
of  an  overpowering  charm  in  the  country,  an  indescribable 
fascination  in  the  people.  The  charm  was  partly  due  to  the 
country  itself,  partly  to  the  manner  of  life  lived  there,  and 
partly  to  the  nature  of  the  people.  The  qualities  that  did 
exist,  and  whose  benefit  I  experienced,  seemed  to  me  the  most 
precious  of  all  qualities  ;  the  virtues  the  most  important  of  all 
virtues  ;  the  glimpses  of  beauty  the  rarest  in  kind  ;  the  songs 
and  the  music  the  most  haunting  and  most  heart -searching  ; 
the  poetry  nearest  to  nature  and  man  ;  the  human  charity 
nearest  to  God. 

This  is  perhaps  the  secret  of  the  whole  matter,  that  the 
Russian  soul  is  filled  with  a  human  Christian  charity  which  is 
warmer  in  kind  and  intenser  in  degree,  and  expressed  with  a 
greater  simplicity  and  sincerity,  than  is  to  be  met  with  in  any 
other  people  ;  it  was  the  existence  of  this  quality  behind 
everything  else  which  gave  charm  to  Russian  life  (however 
squalid  the  circumstances  might  be),  poignancy  to  its  music, 
sincerity  and  simplicity  to  its  religion,  manners,  intercourse, 
music,  singing,  verse,  art,  acting — in  a  word  to  its  art,  its  life, 
and  its  faith. 

Never  did  I  realise  this  so  much  as  one  day  when  I  was  driv- 
ing on  a  cold  and  damp  December  evening  in  St.  Petersburg 
in  a  cab.  It  was  dark,  and  I  was  driving  along  the  quays  from 
one  end  of  the  town  to  the  other.  For  a  long  time  I  drove 
in  silence,  but  after  a  while  I  happened  to  make  some  remark 
to  the   cabman  about   the  weather.     He   answered   gloomily 


THE  FASCINATION  OF  RUSSIA  437 

that  the  weather  was  bad  and  so  was  everything  1        too.     For 
some   time  we  drove  on   in  silence,  and   then   in   answer   to 
some   other   stray    remark    or    question    of    mine    he    said   he 
had    been    unlucky   that    day   in   the    matter    of    a   fine.      It 
was    a    trivial    point,    but    somehow    or    other    my   interest 
was  aroused,  and  I  got  him  to  tell  me  the  story,  which  was 
a  case  of  bad  luck  and  nothing  serious  ;  but  whin  he  had 
told  it,  he  gave  such  a   profound   sigh  that   I  asked  whether 
it   was   that   which   was   still   weighing   upon   him.     Then    he 
said  "No,"  and  slowly  began  to  tell   me  a  story  of  a  great 
catastrophe  which  had  just  befallen  him.     He  possessed  a  little 
land,  and  a  cottage  in  the  country,  not  far  from  St.  Petersburg. 
His   house   had    been    burnt.       It    was    true    the    house   was 
insured,   but   the  insurance   was    not   sufficient   to   make  an 
appreciable    difference.      He    had    two    sons  ;    one   went    to 
school,  and  the  other  had  some  employment  in  the  provinces. 
The  catastrophe  of  the  fire   had   upset   everything.     All  his 
belongings  had  perished.     He  could  no  longer  send  his  boy 
to  school.     His  second  son,  in  the  country,  had  written  to 
say  he  was  engaged  to  be  married,  and  had  asked  his  consent, 
advice,  and  approval.     "  He  has  written  twice,"  said  the  cab- 
man, "  and  I  keep  silence  (i ya  molchu).     What  can  I  answer  ?  " 
I  cannot  give  any  idea  of  the  strength,  simplicity,  and  poignancy 
of  the  tale  as  it  came,  hammered  out  slowly,  with  pauses  between 
each  sentence,  with  a   dignity  of  utterance  and  a  purity  of 
idiom  which  used  to  be  the  precious  privilege  of  the  poor  in 
Russia.     The  words  came  as  if  torn  out  from  the  bottom  of  his 
heart.     He  made  no  complaint  ;   there  was  no  grievance,  no 
whine  in  the  story.     He  stated  the  bald  facts  with  a  simplicity 
which  was  overwhelming.     In  spite  of  all,  his  faith  in  God  and 
his  consent  to  the  will  of  Providence  was  unshaken,  certain, 
and  sublime. 

This  happened  in  191 1.  I  have  forgotten  the  details;  but  I  knew 
I  had  been  face  to  face  with  a  human  soul,  stripped  and  naked, 
and  a  human  soul  in  the  grip  of  a  tragedy.  This  experience, 
which  brought  one  in  touch  with  the  divine,  is  one  which,  I 
think,  could  only  in  such  circumstances  occur  in  Russia.  I 
wrote  this  in  the  year  1913  when  I  was  summing  up  my  im- 
pressions on  Russian  life,  and  trying  to  analyse  the  nature 
of  the  fascination  the  country  had  for  me.  When  I  had 
finished,    I   echoed    the   words   which    R.    L.    Stevenson   once 


438  THE  PUPPET  SHOW  OF  MEMORY 

addressed  to  a  French  novelist  :   "  J'ai  beau  admirer  les  autres 
de  toute  ma  force,  c'est  avec  vous  que  je  me  complais  a.  vivre." 

In  the  spring  of  1914  I  went  back  to  Russia  for  the 
last  time  before  the  war.  I  spent  over  a  month  by  myself  at 
Sosnofka,  writing  a  book,  an  outline  of  Russian  literature, 
and  bathing  every  afternoon  in  the  river  where  the  sweetbriar 
grew  on  the  banks  by  the  willows,  and  the  kingfisher  used  every 
now  and  then  to  dart  across  the  oily-looking  water. 

It  was  a  wonderful  spring.  The  nightingales  sang  all  day 
long  in  the  garden  ;  and  all  night  long  people  were  singing  in 
the  village.  Nature  was  steeped  in  beauty  and  calm.  It  was 
a  month  of  accidental  retreat  before  tremendous  events  and 
the  changing  of  the  world. 

I  knew  nothing  of  public  events,  but  I  was  suddenly  seized 
with  the  desire  to  go  home.  I  debated  whether  to  go  or  not.  I 
had  finished  my  book,  but  as  I  meant  to  come  back  to  Russia 
in  August  it  seemed  perhaps  foolish  to  go.  I  thought  I  would 
leave  it  to  chance.  I  decided  to  take  the  Sortes  Shakespeariance. 
I  opened  a  volume  at  random,  and  my  pencil  fell  on  the  phrase  : 
'  Pack  and  be  gone  "  (Comedy  of  Errors,  iii.  2,  158).  I  waited 
another  day  and  repeated  the  experiment.  My  pencil  again 
fell  on  the  same  line.  Then  I  settled  to  go.  I  started  one 
evening,  and  in  the  morning  when  I  arrived  at  the  Friedrichs- 
strasse  Station  at  Berlin,  I  saw  in  the  newspapers  the  news 
of  the  assassination  of  the  Austrian  Archduke.  I  might  have 
said  :  "  Incipit  vita  nova,"  but  I  didn't.  I  didn't  even  think 
it.  I  was  merely  conscious  of  a  small  cloud  on  an  otherwise 
stainless  sky. 


INDEX 


A.D.C,  the,  144,  '53- 

A.   R,  at  (  'ambiidge,    146. 

Abbe"  Constantin  {/.'),  92,  305. 

Abdul  1 1  amid,  dethroned,  397. 

Abin^d<>n,  142. 

Acropolis,  Athens,  254,  256. 

Addington,  138. 

Adonais,  Shelley,  161,  163. 

AdrutUU  I '  ecouvreur,  232  ;  produced 
hv  Sarah  Bernhardt,  305  ;  Scribe 
and  Legouv^s,  308-9. 

Adventures  of  Sophy,  Violet  Fane,  247. 

Afoo,  Chinese  servant,  276,  279-80. 

Agadir  crisis,  212. 

Agincourt,  Admiral  Glvn's  ship,  47. 

Aii-lon     (V),      233,     243;    first     pet 
formance,    the     Hon.     Maun  e 
Baring's  article  in  the  Speaker, 
199-204  ;  Sarah    Bernhardt    in, 

3°5- 
Ainger's  (House),  Lton,  88. 

Airlie,  Lady,  62. 
Aladin,  deputy,  340,  347. 
Albani,  Madame,  27,  52. 
Albanians  in  I'skub,  415-16. 
Albert  Hall,  26,  139. 

—  Prince,  131. 
Albo,  Pomeranian,  30. 
Alexander,  butler,  220,  223. 

—  comic  actor,  136. 

Alexandra,      Queen,     348  ;      visit     to 

Copenhagen,  225-26. 
Alexandria,  168. 
Alexandrovna,  Marie,  34S  note. 
Alexei,  boot -boy,  220. 
Alexeieff,  Viceroy,  263. 
Alice  in  Wtmdtrland,  170. 
Allen,  Mr.  f.,  154. 
Alt,     Miss,    at     S.m    Stefano,    421-29 

passim. 
Amants,  Maurice  Donnay,  166. 
Ante  ptiicnttc  (/.'),  Brewster,  250. 
American-Spanish  War,  71. 
Amour  ,;>  .''Art,   Labiche,  86. 
Andersen,  I  lans,  20S. 
Anderson,     Maiy,     in      The    Judy    of 

Lyons,  53-54- 


Andcrton's  Hotel,   151. 
Andre,  watchman,  220,  222. 
I  •  -  •  tmaciu,  243. 
Angtlo,  I  lug",  305. 
Angelo,  Michael,  a  farmhouse  of,  167. 
Angers,  198. 
Anglo-Saxon    Review,    poem     by    the 

Hon.  Maurice  Baring,  198. 
Anna  A'arenina,  2 1 9. 
Annie,  nursemaid,  2,  8,  19,   \J. 
Annunzio,    Gabriele    d\    poems,    140, 

232  ;    Vernon     Lee    on,     187  ; 

I.a   Gioconda,    305,    300  : 

posed  dramatic  version  of  Paolo 

and  Francesco,  246. 
Antoine,  actor,  197. 

—  Theatre,  265. 
Antrim,  Lord,  24. 

Apostles,  Society  <>f  the.  I45~40- 

April  Fools'  I 'ay  memories,  24-25. 

Apron  Stage,  use  in  Copenhagen 
theatres,  210. 

Aranci  Bay,  395. 

Arbuthnot,  68. 

Archangel,  358,  360. 

Archer,  Kred,  83. 

Archibald,  photographer,  276-77. 

Arena  Naxionale,  Florence,  311. 

Army,  the  Russian,  condition  at  open- 
ing of  the  Duma,  340-41  ;  dis- 
content, 353. 

—  the  Turkish,  weapons  of  the,  413. 
Attiaut  refugees,  416. 

Arnim,  Frau  von,  136. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  no,  112.  414. 

Art  Theatre,  Moscow,  -•<•,  66,  \2 

Artemis,    Mr.   Gladstone's  lecture    on, 

io8. 

Arthur,  Port,  203,  314. 

Arundel  l'ark,  a  May  night,  4-5. 

At  in  a  LoMng-Glass,  93  94,  -;-. 

AsCOt,  the  School  at.  I   ! 

—  races,  79-80. 
Ashbaiton,  Lady,  26. 

—  Lord,  <>~. 

As<|uith,  Raymond,  Th*  So>th  Street 
Gazette,  390-95- 


439 


440 


INDEX 


Assisi,  earthquake  at,  15S-59. 

Assiz  Bey,  397. 

Assumption,  Cathedral  of  the,  Moscow, 

334-35- 

Astrakan,    the   journey     to,    375-79 ; 

atmosphere,  380. 
Astrophel,  Swinburne,  148. 
Atalanta,  newspaper,  112. 
Athalie,  233,  235-36. 
Athens,  254-56. 
—  Eton,  117. 
Atkins,  Dr.,  41. 
Aurele,  Madame,  66. 
Austria,     Archduke    of,     assassinated, 

438. 
Aventurtire  (L')y  230. 

Bach,  "Passion  Music  of  St.  Matthew," 

103. 
Bachelors'  Club,  139. 
Baden,  Grand  Duchess  of,  216. 
Bagshot,  76. 

Baikal,  Lake,  269-70,  311. 
Baines,  Dr.,  427. 

Balakirev,  Russian  folk-songs,  408. 
Balfour,  Reginald,  at  Angers,  198-99. 
Balkan  War,  19 12,  395. 
Balliol,  170-72. 
Ballooning  experiences,  204-5. 
Balzac,  94,  141. 
Banck,  M.,  98. 
Bancrofts,  the,  51,  53. 
Banville,  Theodore  de,  228  ;  on  Sarah 

Bernhardt,    229    note ;    Cannes 

Parisiens,  243  ;   La  Femme  de 

Claude,  306. 
Rarbier  de  Seville,  310. 
Baretta,  acting  of,  93,  230. 
Bariatinsky,  Princess,  247. 
Baring   Brothers,    the  financial  crisis, 

1890,  113. 

—  General,  62. 

—  Rowland,  82. 

—  the  Hon.  Cecil,  13,  14,  27,  46,  48, 

54,  58,  65,  107. 

—  the    Hon.    Elizabeth,  9-13,  22-25, 

32.  38,  43-44  ;  at  Ascot,  79-80 ; 
marriage,  85-86  ;  house  of,  113. 

—  the  Hon.  Everard,   13,   14,  32,  37, 

65  ;  the  "  Imp,"  40 ;  at  Eton, 
46,  48-49. 

—  the  Hon.   Hugo,  boyhood,  2-3,  9, 

11,  14,  16,  21,  23,  26;  in  the 
schoolroom,  36-41  ;  yachting, 
44  ;  Mr.  Warre  and,  46  ;  Mem- 
bland,  59-60 ;  Marlborough 
House  parties,  80  ;  Ascot  school, 
81;     Eastbourne,    82;     "Miss 


Hastings,"  83 ;  the  game  of 
"  Spankaboo,"  83-84  ;  Cowes, 
85  ;  Paris,  93  ;  Eton,  105,  107, 

113,  1 15- 

Baring,  the  Hon.  John  (now  Lord 
Revelstoke),  13,  14,  20,  27, 
44-46,  65,  68,  102,  107,  135. 

—  the  Hon.  Margaret  (married  Robert 

Spencer),  8-12,  21-23,  35,  43- 
44,  85,  107-8. 

—  the  Hon.  Susan,  9-13,  16,  21,  23- 

25,  35,  44.  74,  85,  86,  91-94. 

—  Windham,  82. 
Barnay,  Ludwig,  136. 

Barnby,  Mr.  Joseph,  organist,  102-3. 
Barnes  Pool,  95. 

Barrack  Room  Ballads,  Kipling,  148. 
Bartet  in  Le  Fere  Prodigiie,   140  ;  in 

Berenice,  192. 
Bastille,  the,  93. 
Bath,  visits  to,  76,  130. 

—  House,  26,  85. 
Battery  Cottage,  40. 

Bauman,  death,  320  ;  funeral,  321-22. 

Bayreuth  Festival,  133-35,  153-54, 168. 

Beardsley,  Aubrey,  144,  149. 

Beam,  Madame  de,  254. 

Beauchamp,  editor  of  the  Eton  Review, 
in. 

Beeching,  Mr.,  148. 

Beerbohm,  Max,  147-48,  155 ;  on 
Rugby  football,  74 ;  correspon- 
dence in  the  Saturday  Review, 

195- 

Beer-drinking  rules  in  Germany,  121- 

125. 

Beethoven,  211. 

Beggars,  Russian,  377. 

Belgrade  Station,  406,  408. 

Bell,  casting  of  a,  382-85. 

Bell,  schoolfellow,  77,  79,  83. 

Belle  Hilene  (La),  197. 

Belle  Maman,  93. 

Belle-Isle,  a  visit  to,  216-18. 

Belloc,  Hilary,  at  Oxford,  170-72 ; 
"Bad  Child's  Book  of  Beasts," 
171  ;  Verses  and  Sonnets,  171  ; 
The  North  Street  Gazette,  390- 
95  ;  The  Four  Men,  391  ;  The 
Eye  Witness,  395. 

Ben  Hur,  105. 

Benckendorff,  Constantine,  263. 

—  Count,  on  Delaunay,  67  ;  in  Copen- 
hagen, 208-9  ;  at  tne  Russian 
Legation,  212  ;  personality,  2 1 3- 
15 ;  invitations  to  the  Hon. 
Maurice  Baring,  218-24 ;  in 
London,  261  ;  on  Russia,  268, 


INDEX 


441 


Benckrndnrli,  Pierre,  223-24,  268. 

Benelli,  Signor,  140. 

Benson,    Arthur,    at    Eton,    100,    104, 

110-12,       116-17,      147,      259; 

poems,     IjS  ;     boOK     of,     142; 

style,  148. 

—  E.  P.,  Dodo,  138,  149. 

—  Mrs.,  138. 

Benzon,  Otto,  comedies,  210-11. 

tug,  Racine,  192-93. 
Berlin,    133 ;    rooms    in    1  fater   den 
Linden,      135-37:     Friedrichs- 
ttrasse  Station,  ; 

—  University,  1 36-37. 

. ■'/,  276. 

Berliner  Theater,  the,   1  16. 

Bernhardt,  Sarah,  1.S7,  197  ;  in 
Hermmi,  53  ;  As  in  a 
Lookutg'Glass,  93-94;  in  la 
Tosca,  107  ;  and  Eleonora 
I  hue,    136  ;    at    Daly's,    167 ; 

in  llAiglon,  199-200,  204  ;  her 
home  in  Belle-Isle,  216-17  ; 
personality,  217-18,  227-44; 
her  interpretation  of  Hamlet, 
239-41  ;  in  L.a  Dame  anx 
Canu'lias,  241  ;  Angela  pro- 
duced, 305  ;  in  La  FtMWU 
Claude,  307  ;  FJdora,  309  ;  her 

greatness,  309-10. 

Bertie,  Sir  Frank,  1S0. 
Bilky,  coachman,  40. 

Bingen,  133. 

Bismarck,  127,  129;  sayings  of,  139; 
on  the  English,  173,  1 75  ; 
remark  concerning  Constanti- 
nople, 419. 

Bizet,  tomb,  94. 

Black  dang,  in  Moscow,  320-23. 

Blackwood,  Basil,  71,  171. 

Blctchington,  Captain,  44-45. 

Blunt,  Ladv  Anne,  169. 

—  Sir  Wilfrid,  169. 

Board  of  Trade,  offices  of  the,  157. 
Bobrinsky,  Count,  2S0. 

—  Count  Andre,  388. 

—  Count  Lev,  3S8-90. 

—  Countess,  389-90. 

Boer  War,    feeling   between   (icrmany 

and  England,  174  -75. 
Boiltau,  reading  of,  152. 
Bois  de  Boulogne,  16,  67,  92. 
Boissier,  36. 
Boito,  opera,  310. 
Bolsheviks,    national    anthem    of    the, 

321  note. 
Bonn,  133. 
Borthwick,  Oliver,  268. 


Boris  Go.iounor,  310. 

Boeanqnet,  editor  of  the  Para  >.uir,  1  si. 

"II,  a  quotation,  185. 
hier,  Mr.,   104. 
fom  (Les),  233. 
Bourgeois  Gentilhotinne,  75. 
•dy  on,  194  95. 
ike,  1  larry,  43. 

Bowden,  Father  -         ian,  395-96. 
Brachet,  Grammairt  //isforii/ue,  1  14. 

Brackley,  I^ord,  at  Eton,  89. 

- 

■.•-.,  I  'r.  '  reorge,  211. 

—  Erau,  133. 

Braun,  l»oy  at  Hildesheim,  120-21  ; 
explains  l>cer-drinking,  121-23. 

Breguet  watches,  presents  of,  5556, 
115. 

Brewster,  139,  184  ;  works  of,  249-51  ; 
1 ' Ame  paiemu,  250  ;  on  Vcr- 
laine,  251  ;  on  the  production 
of  Shakespeare,  251-52;  the 
Prion,  252  ;   in  Koine,  259-60. 

Bridges,   Rol>ert,    pamphlets  of   \ 
14S. 

Brinkman  prize,  the,  91. 

British  Eniyclopitdia,  article  by  the 
Hon.  Maurice  Baring,  226. 

Brizzi,  Signor,  52. 

Broadwood,  at  Ascot,  78-79  ;  at  East- 
bourne, 82-85  ;  al  Eton,  v;. 

—  Colonel,  76. 
Brocken,  climbing  the,  128. 
Brohan,  Madeleine,  230. 
Brompton  Oratory,  395-96. 

Bronte,  Charlotte,  228  ;  Jane  Eyre, 
106. 

Brooke,  duy,  269,  271,  2S0,  292. 

Brothers  A'arawaiov  ( The),  Dostoiev- 
sky, 293. 

Broughton  Castle,  204. 

Brown,  Mrs.,  sock-shop,  95-96,  105, 
117. 

Browne,  Miss  Pinkie,  61-62. 

Browning,  Oscar,  153. 

—  Robert,  151,  169. 
Brusa,  404-5. 

h  irest,  418. 

Bnckstone,  art  of,  51. 

Bulgarians,  spirit  of  the,  416-17. 
Bullock,    Mr.,    guard    at    Paddington, 

6-7. 
Bulteel,  Bessie,  48,  54,  58,  61,  66. 

—  Erne  (Aunt), 

Lady  Elisabeth,  29-30. 

—  (Uncle  Johnnj ),  ;;.  41  .  W  58,  176. 
Burcher,   Mr.,  librarian  at    Eton,    IIO, 

116. 


442 


INDEX 


Burlington  House,  56. 

Burne-Jones,  56,  232,  235. 

Burschenschaft,  125-26. 

Butat,  M.,  27,  28. 

Byron,  50,  58,   126,   186;  quoted,  50, 

282  ;  Arthur  Benson  and,  112  ; 

Professor    Ihne    on,    163  ;    the 

singer  of  Greece,  255. 

Cafe  de  Paris,  92. 

Cairo,  the  Agency,  168-69. 

Califano,  95. 

Calverley,  145. 

Cambridge,  141  ;  King's  College,  143- 

45  ;    debating    societies,     143  ; 

Society  of  the  Apostles,  145-46  ; 

work  done  by  the  Hon.  Maurice 

Baring,  151-53. 
Cambridge  ABC,  newspaper,  144. 
Cambridge  University  Press,  pamphlet 

of  poems  by  the  Hon.  Maurice 

Baring,  199. 
Camc'es  Parisiens,  Banville,  243. 
Cameron,  Miss  Violet,  28. 
Campbell,  Herbert,  24,  83. 

—  Mrs.     Patrick,    56,     149  ;    in     The 

Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith,  157- 
58  ;  in  Magda,  167  ;  in  Pellias, 

305- 

—  minor,  Ascot,  79. 

—  Niall,  71. 

Captain    Swift,    at    the    Haymarket, 

107. 
Card  games,  German,  124. 
Carducci,  140. 

Carlyle,  Arthur  Benson  and,  112. 
Carmen,  187. 
Carnac,  temple  of,  169. 
Carr,  editor  of  the  Parachute,  ill. 
Carr-Bosanquet,    parody    on    Kipling, 

144  ;      humour      of,      144-45  ; 

rooms  of,    153. 
Carregi,  167. 
Carrol,  Lewis,  180. 
Caruso,  52. 

Castellane,  Count  Boni  de,  206. 
Castiglione,  Madame  de,  196. 
Catherine  11.,  339,  355. 
Cavalleria  Rusticana,  133. 
Cecil,  Lord  Sackville,  166-67. 
Cemented  Bricks  Society,  151. 
"  Cercle  de  l'Union,"  184,  196,  206. 
Cercle  des  De'bats  (Le),  113. 
Certosa,  the,  159. 
Cetonia,  schooner,  45. 
Chaika,  by  Tchekhov,  323. 
Chaliapine,  263,  309-10,  376-77. 
Chantilly,  205. 


Charles,  Prince  and  Princess,  of  Den- 
mark, 225. 

Chatelet,  the,  Paris,  92. 

Cherie,  French  governess,  9-138 
passim. 

Chernaya,  village  of,  325-26. 

Cherry  Orchard,  Tchekhov,  266,  268. 

Chesterton,  Cecil,    The  New  Witness, 

395- 

—  Gilbert,  395. 
Chevrillon,  Andre,  195. 
Childe  Harold,  112. 
Children,  notes  on,  373-74. 
Children  of  the  Sun,  Gorky,  323. 
Chinese  Catholic  priests,  283. 
Chit-Chat  Debating  Society,  144. 
Cholera  in  San  Stefano,  419-29. 
Chough's  Nest,  Lynton,  197-98. 
Christians    in    Uskub,    massacre    pre- 
vented, 414-16. 

Christie,      Mrs.,      education     of     the 

children,   11-158. 
Christmas  in  Germany,  155-56. 
Church,  Stories  from  Homer,  46. 
Churchill,  Winston,  at  Ascot,  71. 
Civil  Service  Commission,  177. 
Clairin,  217. 
Clapshaw,  Mr.,  89. 
Clarendon,  Lady,  55. 
Clarke,  at  Eton,  103. 

—  Rev.  Dawson,  154. 
Clarkson,  Mr.,  153. 
Clemenceau,  M.,  195. 
Cleopatra,  the  M.S.,  169. 
Clifford,  Lady  de,  62. 
Clothes,  nationality  and,  373. 
Clubs  in  Heidelberg,  125. 
Cluny  Musee,  92. 
Coblenz,  133. 

Cocart  et  Bicoquet,  92 . 

Coleridge,  240;  "Ancient  Mariner" 
quoted,  270. 

Coliseum,  Rome,  246. 

Collins,  an  essay  on,  by  the  Hon. 
Maurice  Baring,  142. 

Cologne,  133. 

Colonial  Office,  177. 

Comedie  francaise,  230,  265. 

Compiegne,  198. 

Congreve,  148. 

"Conscripts'  Farewell  (The),"  61. 

Constantinople,  rebellion  1909,  397- 
98  ;  Russian  pilgrims  in, 
400-1  ;  the  new  Sultan,  401-4  ; 
Adrianople  Gate,  402  ;  Novem- 
ber impressions,  418-20  ; 
cholera  at  San  Stefano,  419- 
429. 


INDEX 


443 


Contrexeville,  56,  65-67,  Si,  153, 
Coombe    Cottage,   near     Maiden,   3-7, 

IO,  12,  14,  17. 
Copeman,    Miss,  at  Eton,  87,  99-IOO, 

112. 
Copenhagen,    British    legation,    207- 

26  ;     Tivoli     music-hall,     209  ; 

the  Bred  Gade,  212. 
Coppee,  Francois,  It  Passant,  228. 
Coqnehn  in  L  i-.tourdi,  107  ;  in  VAbbi 

Constantin,    305;    art    of,    51, 

199,   230,   243. 
Corfu,  256. 
Corinth,  254. 
Cornish,  Gerald,  1 16. 

—  Hubert,  at   Heidelbenr,  118,   l-M 

26,  128,  133  ;  in  Naples,  141  ; 
1  .imbridge,  143,  140  ;  journal- 
ism, 144  ;  criticism  of  the  new 
poets,  150;  Devonshire,  198. 

—  Mr.,  at  Eton,  8S,  98,  117,  141-42, 

180. 
— »Mrs.,  114. 
Cosham,  1 14. 
Cossacks,    fire  on  crowd  at  Bauman's 

funeral,    322  ;    attitude    during 

the    Revolution,     353  ;    on   the 

Volga  steamers,  375. 
Country  Girl  in  St.  Petersburg,  324. 
Covent    Garden    Opera    House,   Aida, 

53- 
Coventry,  Willie,  no,  112,  1 15-16. 

Cowes  Regatta,  44,  85. 

Cowley,  155. 

Cowper,  "  Hark  my  Soul,"  50. 

—  Lord,  176. 
Crackenthorpe,  147. 

Crawford,  Marion,  Mr.  Isaacs,  50;  a 
favourite  author,  105-6. 

Crawshay,  Mrs.,  245. 

Crecy,  forest  of,  205. 

Crenu-r'-.,  Bond  Street,  5  ;  Regent 
Street,  7. 

Crime  and  Punishment,    Dostoievsky, 

293- 
Croizette,  230. 
Cromer,  Lord,  82,  396  ;  Me  Urn  I 

168-69  ;    on    Lord    Salisbury*! 

Foreign  policy,    17S. 
Croome  Court,  1 12. 
Crosbie,  Mr.,  40,  135. 
Crowds,  Russian,  383-85. 
Cruises  in    [QO8,  39C, 
("rum.  at  Eton,   1 16. 
Cuckoo  Weir,  95. 
Cunlifle.   it  Eton,  10S. 
Cuppy,  Mr.  H.17I1U  Alv.i,   124,  127. 
Curcin,  Dr.  Milan,  410-1 1 ,  412    417. 


Currie,  Lady,  245-47,  261-62. 

—  Lord,  in  Rome,  145  47.  261-62. 

1  1  liny,  <■!,    1 49. 

Cnyp,  16. 

Cyrano  de  Bergerat,  200 

Daily  Mail,  275. 

Daily  News,  1 

Daily  Telegraph,  276. 

Daly*    Theatre,    Sarah    Bernhardt    at, 

167. 
I  '.uii.il.i,  M.,  53. 
Dame  aux   Came'lias,  Sarah  Bernhardt 

in,    136,    231,     241  ;    Due    in, 

235.  309- 
Damozel  .  by  the  Hon.  Maurice 

Baring,  1 1.;. 
Dancing  .  25-26. 

1  'ante,  quoted,  140,  404. 
Darmsteter,  Madame,  195. 

Dart,  the,  374- 
Dartmoor,  31,  57. 
Datchet,  regatta,  142. 

Daud<-\  Alphonse,  105. 

Davantientung,  life  in,  2S3-86. 
David  Grine,  Mrs.  H.  Ward,  148. 
Davidson,  John,  147-4S,  151. 
Day  of  My  Lite  ,;.'  Eton  (A  1,  144- 
Deacon,  Mr.,  6,  *7,  \ ,  03. 
Debating  Societies,    Eton,    113:  <am- 

1-ridge,  143-44- 
Decemviri   Debating    Society,    143-44, 

'53- 
Delaunay,  art  of,  51,  67,  230. 

I  lelcasse,  M.,  iv  | 

Delos,  256. 

Delphi,  rocks  of,  254. 

Denmark,  King  of,  209-10;  and  King 

Edward  vii.,  224-25. 
Dtt    l! :!.':',  Ethel  Smyth,  215. 
Derby,  the,  167. 
D    clee,  52. 
Devonshire,    visits    t ...    ;.,    6  ;  scenery 

compared     with    South    Russia, 

386. 
Devonshire    House,    fancy   dress    ball, 

1897,  176. 
Dickens,    Charles,     reading     of,      >;; 

humour  of,  398, 
Die  Alte  Tante,  1 19. 
Die  BJkrt,  Sndennann,  136. 
Dillon,  Dr.,  ; 
Dimitri,  servant,  2S2. 
Dimitriev-Mainonov,  Alexander,  314. 

Dimmock,  0  135  ,*••• 

I  tiplomal  c  Set        .   rraminal 

the,  153-56. 
Dittel,  Herr,   : 


444 


INDEX 


Dodo,  Benson,  13S,  149. 

Dolts  House,  Ibsen,  136 ;  in  Copen- 
hagen, 210-11  ;  Duse  in,  309. 

Don  Giovanni,  186,  211. 

Donizetti,  52. 

Donnay,  Maurice,  Amants,  166. 

Donne,  lines  quoted,  226. 

Dostoievsky,  novels  of,  261,  293  ; 
Nazarenko's  opinion  of,  343. 

Dowson,  Ernest,  149  ;  poem  by,  150. 

Doyle,  Conan,  381. 

Drachman,  Holger,  Gurre,  210,  211. 

Drake,  Ingalton,  95. 

Dresden,    118,    133;    picture   gallery, 

135- 
Drew,  Mr.,  97. 

Dreyfus  campaign,  184-85,  195-97, 
209. 

Drury  Lane  Pantomimes,  Mother  Goose, 
8,  83,  245  ;  Duse  at,  167. 

Du  Lau,  M.,  192,  206-7. 

Du  Maurier,  55  ;  cited,  321. 

Duckworth,  at  Ascot,  73. 

Dudley,  Georgiana,  Lady,  196. 

Duels  in  Heidelberg,  127-28. 

Dufferin,  Lord,  in  Paris,  166. 

Duma,  the  Russian,  opening  of  first, 
332,  339-41  5  dissolution,  341- 
42  ;  discussions  about  the,  353— 
54  ;  the  third,  390. 

Dumas  fils,  Alexandre,  141,  230  ; 
Comme  Elles  sont  Toutes,  85- 
86  ;  Dame  aux  Camillas,  136, 
23 1 ,  309  ;  La  Fetnme  de  Claude, 
235,  305-8  ;  La  Visite  de  Noccs, 
3°5.  308. 

Dunglass,  at  Eton,  89,  102,  105-6, 
1 1 5-16. 

Durnford,  Mr.  Walter,  46,  63,  1 16. 

Duse,  Eleonora,  art  of,  52-53,  136, 
167,  309—10  ;  in  La  Dame  aux 
Came" lias,  184  ;  as  Magda,  210, 
234-35;  in  Ftdora,  231,  309; 
at  the  Waldorf  Theatre,  305  ;  in 
La  Femme  de  Claude,  306-8  ;  in 
The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray, 
309  ;  in  La  Gioconda,  309. 
Dutch  Reformed  Church,  Constan- 
tinople, 422. 
Dyce,  his  Shakespeare,  185. 

E.  at  Timmes,  161-64. 

Eagle,  shop  in  Edgware  Road,  28. 

Earthquake  at  Assisi,  158-59. 

"  East  and  West,"  Hilary  Belloc,  391- 

92. 
Easter     in     Russia,      155  ;      Moscow 

festivities,  334-39- 


Ebb  Tide,  Stevenson,  148. 
Edgcombe,  Colonel,  15,  60-61. 
Edgcumbe,  Lady  Ernestine,  61. 

—  Lord  Mount,  60-63. 
Edinburgh,  Duchess  of,  348. 
Edouard,  Les  Enfant s  d'Edouard,  21. 
Edward  VII.,  in  Denmark,  224-25. 
Edwin    and   Angelina,    Violet   Fane, 

245. 
Egerton,  Francis,  98. 
Egypt,  168. 

Egyptian  Red  Crescent,  427-28. 
Eiffel  Tower,  93. 

Ekaterinoslav  Regiment,  the,  335. 
Eldorado  Paris  Music  Hall,  66. 
Elgin,  Lord,  255. 
Eliot,  George,  106,  112. 
Elliot,  Charles,  191. 
Ellis,  Colonel,  60. 

—  Edwin,  149. 

—  Gerald,  60. 

—  Mr.,  carpenter,  42,  59. 
Elsinore,  224-25. 

En  Paix,  197. 

Encyclopedia   Britannica,   articles  by 
the  Hon.  Maurice  Baring,  261. 

English  Lyrics,  Le  Gallienne,  149. 

Enver  Pasha,  397. 

Epic  of  Hades,  Lewis  Morris,  98. 

Esclangon,  M.,  154-55- 

Eton,  Warre's  House,  13,   14;  4th  of 
June,  65,  106-7  ;  Lower  Chapel, 
89 ;  first  summer  half,    94-95  ; 
sock-shops,  95-96  ;  duty  of  the 
prepostor,    96,      1 00;    masters, 
96-100  ;    religious    instruction, 
1 00- 1  ;    music  lessons,    1 01-3  ; 
ragging     of    masters,     103-4  ; 
breakfasts  with  the  Head  Master, 
107  ;    New  Schools  opened   by 
Queen     Victoria,      108  ;     Mr. 
Gladstone's  speech  on  classical 
education,    108-9  ;    system    of 
punishments,        109-10 ;       the 
School    library,    no,    116;  the 
boats,         1 1 2- 1 3  ;        Debat  ing 
Societies,  1 13-14  ;  Tercentenary, 
1 89 1,   114;  the  Prince  Consort 
prize  (1891)  won  by  the  Hon. 
Maurice  Baring,  n  4- 16  ;  House 
matches,  115  ;  the  playing  fields, 
117  ;Mr.  Cornish  Vice-Provost, 
141-42;  newspapers  and  books 
about,      144  ;     compared     with 
Cambridge,  170  ;  Cloisters,  180. 
Eton  and  Harrow  match,  64-65,  115. 
Eton  Boating  Song,  103. 
Eton  Chronicle,  144. 


INDEX 


445 


Eton  Review,  the,  1 1 1 . 
Elon  Volunteers,  108. 
Etourdi  (/.'),  Coquelin,  107. 
Evans1  House,  Eton, 
Executions,  Turkish,  398-99. 
Exhibition,  the  Paris,  1900,  93. 
Eye  Witness  (  The),  editors,  395. 
Eyoub,  Mosque  of,  402,  403. 

Faguet,     M.     l.mile,    242  ;    Propos   tie 
Th/Jtre,  243. 

Fair  at  Nijni-Novgorod,  371-73. 

Falka,  28. 

Fanshawe,  Miss,  50. 

Fantasio,  Ethel  Smyth,  216. 

Fargeuil,  53. 

Farms  in  South  Russia,  387. 

Fashoda  crisis,  178. 

Faure,  President,  death  of,  1S7. 

Faust,  Goethe,  26,  136,  164  ;  Gounod, 

136. 
Favart,  Madame,  230. 
Fehvre,  230. 
Fechter,  51. 

Ftdora,  Sardou,  231,  305,  309. 
Femme    de     Claude    (/-<»),     Dose    in, 

305-9- 
Feodor,  peasant,  348-49. 
Feuillet,  Octave.   106. 
Fidelia,  324. 
Field,  Michael,  151. 
Fielding,  III. 
Figaro,  the,  143. 
Fires,  Russian  village,  3S2. 
First  Siberian  1    «]      298. 
Fish,  Hamilton,  71. 
Fisher,  Commander,  395. 
Fitzgerald,  Arthur  Benson  and,  112. 
1'  letcher,  171. 
Flete,  33-34- 
Florence,    140-41,    1 5S  ;    June    nights, 

4;    the    earthquake,    158-60; 

Giotto'fl  Tower,   167. 

Foire  de  Jambon,  Fa,  Paris,  92. 
Foix,  Gaston  de,  statue  at  Milan,  302. 
Folkestone,  Lady,  54. 
Fontaine,  La,  Fables,  20,  352. 
Fontainebleau,  205  ;  forest  of,  198. 
Fontanka,   the,    Countess    ShuvalofTs 

house,  263. 
Food  of  the  Gods,  Wells,  2S5. 

Ford,  Major,  420-29. 

Foreign    Office,    African    Department, 

177-80;   the   Commercial   De* 
partment,  260-61. 

tcr,   l'.irket,  16. 
Fort    des     Poulains,    house    of    Sarah 
Bernhardt,  216-17. 


Fortune-telling,  352. 

Forum,  the,  259. 

Four  A  fen  (The),  Belloc,  39 1. 

Foyod,  92. 

France,  Anatolc,  works,  141  ;  criticism 
by  the  Hon.  Maurice  Baring, 
156  57  ;  parody  on,  194-95. 
213  ;  his  receptions,  184-85, 
195-96  ;  Count  Pasolini  and, 
349. 

Franconia,  the,  125. 

Franco-Prussian  War,  51,  129. 

,k,  footman,  27. 
/■tank  Fasrleigh,  68. 

Frankfort,  133. 

Irascati,  259. 

Eraulein  Schmidt  und  Mr.  Anstruther, 

370. 
Frederick,  Empress,  88,  129. 

—  the     Great,     rooms     at     Potsdam, 

129. 
Frew,  Mr.,  422-29. 
Fullerton,       I^ady      Georgiana,       Too 

Strange  not  to  be  Tt  ue,    : 
Fun-chu-Ling,  village,  299. 

Gaedke,  Colonel,  276-77,  281. 

GalatS  Bridge,  execution-,  39S-4OO. 
Gale,   Norman,    153;  Country   lyrics, 

14S. 
( ralgenberg,  the,  1 19. 
Gallienne,    Richard    le,    147  ;    English 

Eyries,     149;    "What    of    the 

Darkness,"   150;    friendship  of, 

151. 
Galliffet,  General,  184,  196-97,  206-7. 

—  Madame  de,   193. 

( iainberaia,  villa,  167. 
( iarrick,  227. 

—  Chambers,  London,  154,   156. 

—  Club,  154. 

—  Theatre,  157,  310. 
Geissler,  Dr.,  422. 

( vernier,  actor,  197. 

Genesis,  Andrew  Lang,  1 48. 

"Georgian  p>ets,"  412;  Books  of 
( reorgian  Poetry,  147. 

( iir.uliiin,  07. 

Gericault,  tomb,  94. 

German  Crown  Prince,  in  Jubilee  pro 

-ion,  85. 

—  Emperor,  44;    visit   to    Eton,    10S; 

at      Oucen      Victoria's     funeral, 
216. 
Germany,  antipathy  towards  England, 
129;  remarks  on,  172-73. 

Ghosts,  [been.  ',25. 
Gierke,  3S6-8S. 


446 


INDEX 


Gilbert  and  Sullivan  operas,  24,  25. 

"Gilles,"67. 

Gioconda,  D'Annunzio,  305  ;  Duse  in, 

3°9- 

Giorgone,  185. 

Giroux,  35. 

Gladstone,  Hon.  W.  E.,  Lady  Dorothy 
Nevill  on,  15;  reputation  at 
Ascot,  77-78  ;  lecture  at  Eton, 
108-9. 

Glenesk,  Lord,  268. 

Gluck,  185,  210;  Orpheo,  211. 

Glyn,  Admiral,  47. 

Godziadan,  312. 

Goethe,  poetry  of,  51,  126 ;  Faust, 
136,  164,  311. 

Gogol,  novels,  261,  364  ;  humour  of, 
298  ;  on  Russia,  430,  431. 

Golden  Horn,  view,  397. 

Goldoni,  La  Locandiera,  305. 

Goomes,  Captain,  44. 

Gorky,  The  Children  of  the  Sun,  323- 
24. 

Goschen,  Sir  E.,  208,  209;  work  of 
the  Legation,  214-15,  225. 

Gosse,  Mr.  Edmund,  142,  147-48 ; 
verses  published  1894,  148 ; 
friendship,  151  ;  literary  dis- 
cussions, 155-57,  185;  in 
Copenhagen,  209;  Hypolympia, 
209. 

Got,  art  of,  51,  230. 

Gotha,  school  at,  130-31. 

Gounod,  Faust,  136. 

Grace,  19,  37. 

Graham,  106. 

Grain,  Corney,  17. 

Grand  d'Hauteville,  at  Eton,  114. 

Granier,  Jeanne,  in  Amants,  166. 

Granville,  Lady,  26. 

—  Lord,  62. 
Grassina,  village,  159. 
Gray's  Elegy,  18. 

Great     Western      Railway,     Swindon 

works,  76. 
Greece,    Sarah    Bernhardt    on,    217; 

visits  to,  254. 

—  King  of,  225. 

Greek  Church,  Paris,  187. 

—  School,  San   Stefano,  cholera  hos- 

pital, 421-29. 

—  traders  in  Kharbin,  275. 
Green,  Mr.  Nathaniel,  22. 

—  C.  A.,  149. 
Greffuhle,  Madame,  199. 
Grevin,  Musee,  92. 
Grey,  Lady  de,  60. 

Grey,  Lady  Georgiana,  58  59. 


Grisi,  52. 

Grosvenor  House  parties,  54. 

Guatemala,  180. 

Guadarelli,      Guidarello,      statue      at 

Ravenna,  302. 
Guildhall  concerts,  27. 
Guitry  in  Amants,  166. 
Gunchuling,  312. 
Gunter,    A.    C,     That     Frenchman, 

106. 
Gurko,  Colonel,  283. 
Gurre,  Holger  Drachman,  210-11. 
Gymnase,  Paris,  93,  265. 
Gymnasium,  Hildesheim,  120-21. 

H.  B.,  195. 

Haggard,  Rider,  105,  107,  155. 

Haichen  Station,  281-82. 

Plale,  Mr.  Badger,  97. 

Halevy,     199 ;      VAbbi     Constantin, 

106. 
Half-hours  in  the  Far  South,  75. 
Halifax,  Lord,  88. 
Halle,  Sir  Charles,  62. 
Hamilton,  Leslie,  116. 

—  war  correspondent,  269. 

Hamlet,  review  in  North  Street  Gazette, 
392-93  ;  Sarah  Bernhardt's,  231 

233.  239-41- 
Hammonet,  M.,  114. 
Hampton  Court  residences,  58. 
Hands,  Charles,  275-76. 
Hanover,  118. 
Harben,  at  Eton,  98. 
Harbin,  275,  293. 
Harbord  family,  59. 
Hardinge,  Arthur,  191. 
Hardy,    Thomas,     126;    works,    146; 

Tess  of  the  Z>'  Urbervilles,  148. 
Hare,    Sir  John,   art   of,  51,   157  ;  in 

The  Colonel,  53  ;  in  A  Pair  of 

Spectacles,  310. 
Harland,  Henry,  155. 

—  The  Yellow  Book,  1 57. 
Harriet,  housemaid,  27. 
Harris  (Uncle  Willie),  34. 
Harz  Mountains,  128,  175. 
Hasse,  Hildesheim,  121,  129. 
Hatchards,  20. 

Hatfield,  garden-parties,  178. 

Hauptmann,  Lonley  Lives,  266. 

Hawthorne,  Julian,  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough's  Diamonds,   1 06. 

Haymaking  near  Moscow,  349-51. 

Haymarket  Theatre,  53 ;  Captain 
Swift,  107. 

Hearts  of  Men  (The),  260. 

Hedda  Gabler,  Ibsen,  210-11. 


INDEX 


447 


Heidelbf  rg,  4,  133,  135,  163-64  ;  view 
ol    the    Castle,    124  ;    the    I'ni- 
iiy,    124-26. 
Heine,  Heinrich,  119,  156,  172,  228. 
Hele,  M.,  86. 
Heligoland,  cession,  173. 
Hems,  Mr.  I  (any,  40. 
Hengler'a  ( lircus,  17. 
Henley,  148 

—  Antonyi  at  Oxford,  170-72. 

II      ail      .    I  ru,   in  the    DolTi    House, 
210-n. 

Heniy,  Mile  [da,  12-13. 

Herbert,     Auberoii,     at    Oxford,    170, 
176  ;   experiences,    284-85. 

—  Auhrey,  402. 

—  First  Secretary,  Copenhagen,  215. 
Michael,   212;  in    Paris,    181,    183; 

personality,  190-92. 
Heredia,  poems,  255. 
//  -  mann  and  Dorothea,   1 26. 

//,  mam,  35,  229. 

1  [ervieu,  Paul,  199. 

I  [ei  ■,   r  Eton,  103. 

Hetberington,     Grace,    nursery     maid, 

2,8. 
Heygate,  Mr.,  87.  96. 

I  [eywood-Lonsdale,  88. 
Hildesheun,  life  at,  1 18-31,  135,  153- 

161,  172. 
Hihiesheim,    pamphlet     by    the     II    ;.. 

Mauri,  e    B  iring,   I ' »5- 
Hillier,  Arthur  Cecil,   149. 
Hilly,  muse,  2,  3,  5,  8,  9,  37,  39,  41. 
Hliebnikov,  ^g,  290-91,  300. 

II  ibes,  John  <  Hiver,  147,  149. 

Hofteater  Theatre,  Karlsruhe,  216, 
Holl>crg,  comedies,  2IO. 
Holywell,  Oxford,  170. 
1 1" >k,  p<>em  by,  50. 
Hope,  ilfcllow,  70. 

Horace,  Odes,  100,  259. 
Houghton,  Lord,  1 10. 

Heaven,  Thompson,  150. 
House  Debating  Society,  Eton,  113. 
Houses  in  South  Russia,  386-S7. 

1  [oussaye,  I  [enrj ,  199. 

Hua,    M.,    97,    1 14  :    Eton,   87  •.    /.' 

c'<  rxk  lies  Debats,    1 13. 
Hugo,     Victor,    230,    233,     242-43; 
ngt  0,  21,  i(>s  ;  his  tomb,  02  ; 

Kuy    /'.'<:  ,    i  I  I  ■  I 

d'Eviradnus,"  237-39. 

I  [umanists'  Library,  SOI, 

1  [unter,  Mrs.  ( lharles,  139. 

Huret,  Jules,  or  Sarah  Bernhardt,  217- 

218. 
Hurstmonceaux,  83. 


I         i,    I he  Poll's  //. .-.  57,  210, 

309;        lleiia      Gabler,      2IO; 

^1   323. 
Ida,  Mile,  15,  21-22,  26,  66. 
Idiot  (  The),  1  )■        .    ■   Icy,  293. 
Ihnc,    Professor,  al   Hildesheim,   124- 

26,  133.  '35.  "63-64.  '73- 
Illustrated  lj>ndon  News,  1 48. 
Impey,  Mr.,  107. 
Jndomitai .'e,  the,  395. 
I:     iste  River,  the,   1 29. 
International     Law,     examination    in, 

207. 
Invalides,  the,  92. 
[phtgmi*  auf  7'auris,  126. 
Ifktgtnit,  Racine,  228. 
Irkutsk,  the  journey  to,  269-72,  314. 
Irving,   Sir   Henry,  art   of,    24,  51-52  ; 

as  Becket,  310. 

Italian    language   learned   at   Florence, 
140. 

—  Opera,  appreciation  of,  52. 

Italy,  childish  impressions,  38-39. 
[to,  Marquis,  273. 

Ivan    the    little    Fool,    Russian   itory, 
272  :;. 

Ivan  the  Terrible,  310. 

han  Veliki,  Cathedral  of,  335. 

Ivanot',  Tchekhov,  265. 
Ivy  Bridge,  31,  41. 

Tagotr,  Herr,  24S. 

James,    Henry,    147-49  ;     The    7> 

Muse,  228. 
fane  Eyre,  105. 
Janiculum,  the,  259. 
Janotha,  Mile,  24. 

D,    Russian    policy,    261-62  ;    the 

attack  011  l'ort  Arthur,  2<>i. 

Tardin  d*Acclimatation,  92. 
Jaucourt,  Francoise  de,  206. 

Madame  de,  205   o. 

—  Monsieur  de,  21, 8l   83,   104,205-6. 

—  Pierre  de,  82,  84. 

1<  D  tsen-Tung,  312-14. 

Be,   I.   K.,  3S1  ;    Taul  C. 

lessen,  NL  de,  275,  277. 

Jews,   discv  ;    s>  . 

Count   Witte  and   the,   307 
rcms,  389-90. 

Mm,  55. 

John,  Father,  of  Kronstadt,  325. 
John  tnglesant,  50. 

Johnson,    Dr.    127,    SIJ  J    Lhm  of  the 
.    rt>,     185  86 ;     opini 

252-53- 

—  Lionel,  149-50. 
Johnstone,  Sir  Alan,  209,  215. 


448 


INDEX 


Joic  fail  peur  (La),  189. 
Journal,  the,  Ludovic  Naudeau,  corres- 
pondent, 276. 
Jowett,  quoted,  364. 
Joynes,  jimmy,  89. 
Jubilee  year  festivities,  85. 
Jump,  Mr.,  22. 
Jusserand,  M.,  208. 
Justinian,  Palace  of,  398. 

Kadets,  the,  332  ;  opening  of  the 
Duma,  340-41  ;  Count  Witte 
and  the,  367-68. 

Kalnikoff,  General  M.,  414-15. 

Kama  River,  the,  374. 

Karlovna,  Marie,  347-48. 

Karlsruhe,  216. 

Kasten's  Hotel,  Hanover,  118. 

Kazan,  374~75- 

A'eates'  Lane  Papers,  ill. 

Keats,  4,  5,  1 10,   140,  235,  246. 

Keeley,  Mrs.,  51. 

Kendal,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  28. 

—  Mrs.,  art  of,  51,  310-II  ;  in  The 
Ironmaster,  53  ;  in  The  Likeness 
of  the  Night,  310. 

Kenmare  river,  85. 

Kerensky,  341. 

Kershaw  at  Balliol,  176. 

Kharbin,  274-75,  311,  314. 

Kharkov,  386. 

Kholodovsky,  General,  275. 

Khovantincha,  310. 

Kiev,  388. 

Kilkov,  Prince,  315. 

Killarney,  85. 

King  Lear,  163. 

King  Solomon's  Mines,  107. 

Kingsley  Charles,  Westward  Ho ! 
106. 

Kipling,  152  ;  popularity  of,  126,  200; 
parody  on,  144  ;  publications 
1891-92,  148  ;  The  Gate  of  the 
Hundred  Sorrows,  309. 

Kirsanov,  222,  314. 

Kislitsky,  Lieutenant,  283,  287-91, 
295-96,  299,  302,  313. 

Knagenhjelm,  M.  de,  209. 

Kneipe,    entertainment,    125-26,    129, 

133.  *61- 
Kologrivo,  village,  345. 

Kongelige  Theatre,  Copenhagen,  210- 

211. 
Kotz,    Marie    Karlovna  von,    263-64, 

325.  328. 
Kousnetsk,  315. 

Kovolievsky,  Professor,  340,  342. 
Kraus,  Mile,  92. 


Kremlin,  Moscow,  334-36,  Nijni- 
Novgorod,  371  ;  Kazan,  374. 

Kronstadt,  disorders  at,  359-60. 

Krumbacher,  Professor,  254,  256. 

Kuan-chen-tse,  293. 

Kuhn,  Mr.  Otto,  124. 

Kumanovo,  battle  of,  407,  412-16. 

Kuprulu,  414. 

Kuroki,  his  turning  move,  291. 

Kuropatkin,  General,  274,  280,  287, 
312. 

Kursk,  352,  385. 

Kutchuk,  Tchekmedche,  419. 

Labiche,  La  Grammaire,  43. 

Labour  meeting  at  Terrioki,  345-47. 

Lady  Windermere 's  Fan,  Wilde,  148. 

Lamb,  Charles,  145. 

Lambton,  Claud,  48. 

Lamsdorff,  Count,  273. 

Lane,  Mr.  John,  151. 

Lang,  Andrew,  writings,  148  ;  and  the 

Dreyfusards,  197. 
Langtry,  Mrs.,  25. 
Lansdowne,  Lady,  62. 

—  Lord,  62, 

Last  A  Mot  of  G/astonbury  ( The),  71. 

Latude,  escape,  93. 

Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  158,  167. 

Leavenworth  Case  ( 7 he),  74. 

Lee,  Vernon,  141,  1*47,  256,  259,  370 ; 
Belcaro,  20;  a  saying  of,  142; 
and  the  earthquake,  160  ;  home 
of,  167  ;  on  Wagner,  186-87. 

Lee-Hamilton,  Eugene,  167. 

Legouve,  305. 

Leigh,  R.  Austen,  91,  144. 

Leighton,  Sir  Frederick,  55. 

Leighton's  in  Windsor,  95. 

Leipzig,  133  ;  an  incident  at,  154. 

Lemaitre,  Jules,  199  ;  on  Duse's  Magda, 
210 ;  on  Sarah  Bernhardt,  227, 
231.  233-34  ;  Les  Kois,  233  ;  on 
Duse  in  La  Dame  aux  Camilias, 
235  ;  on  Rostand,  242. 

Lemerre,  publisher,  194-95. 

Lhia,  232. 

Lenin,  341. 

Leno,  Dan,  245. 

Lenotre,  168. 

Leo  xiii.,  Pope,  253. 

Leopardi,  140. 

Lermontov,  365  ;  "  The  Demon,"  295. 

Lewes,  Life  of  Goethe,  126. 

Liao-he,  the,  374. 

Liaoyang,  282,  286 ;  the  Hotel  In- 
ternational, 280. 

—  battle  of,  287-92. 


INDEX 


449 


Liberty,  7. 

Lido,  the,  141. 

Lieskov,  3 

Lifts  Handicap t  Kipling,  148. 

/.  ikeness  of th  (  The ) ,  3 1  o. 

Limfa,  256. 

Linevitch,  I  ieneral,  31  1. 

Livre <U  Afoti  Ami,  France,  156-57. 

"Lira,"  musical  instrument,  387  ■ 

Lisle,  Lecomte  de,  203. 

Lister,   Reginald,  reminiscences,    182- 

lity,  iN^-go. 
'i  1. 

Little  Russians,  ;;i   72,  ;S6  et  seq. 

Littre,  1 17. 

Locanditra  [La)t  Goldoni,  308. 

Lohengrin,  1 J  ;. 

Loka  er,  276. 

London  Library,  1 1. 

Lonely  Tree  Hill,  298-99,  302. 

Longman's  Magazine,  14S. 
t  of  th*  Isles,  9 1 . 

0  Eleven  at,  115-16. 

Lorelei,  rocks  of  the,  133. 

Lorenzaccio,   231,   233;    Sarah   Bern- 
hardt in,  233-34- 

Loti,    Piem,    137;    parody   on,    194- 
95 ;    attack    on   the    Serbians, 

4x1. 

Louvre,   92  ;  Mono  Lisa,  67  ;  GaUrie 

J  A  poll  on,  67. 
Low  Mass  in  Notre  Dame,  199. 
Lowther,  Lady,  404. 
Lucas  Stanley,  music  shop  of,  12. 
Lndwig,  1  [err,  13. 
Luxmore,  Mr.,  at  Eton,  1 16-17. 
Luxor,  169. 
Lyall,  Edna,  105. 
Lyceum  Theatre,  La  Tosca,  107-S. 

161. 
Lynton,  197-98. 

Lyttelton,  Edward,  at  Eton,  104. 
Lytton,     Bulwer,    Harold,    75  ;    Last 

Days  of  Pompeii,  106. 

M'Cullagh.  292, 

sent   to, 
I42. 

Macready,  51. 
Madeleine,  tl 

M:      •  r,  229. 

'.  dit  Loin     ,67. 

Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  in, 
in;  :  s.ir  ih  Bernhardt  and 
1  hise  compared  in,  a  .  242, 

3°9- 
Magpie  Debating  Society,  143, 

29 


Mai-\ .  man,  26. 

M  ait  re  liurin,  >i ; 

00. 

Mali) 

Mallet,     - 

his  "Villa  White,"  166-67. 
Malten,   134. 

Mamonov,  316,  329-30. 

Manege,  the,   Mas  »w ,   I 
iheim,  1 

Mantle,  maid. 

Many  Inventions,  Kiplii 

Uo,  1S5. 
Marie  Feodorovna,  Empress,  3 
M  irindin,  105. 
Mario,  52. 

Maritch,  Ales  inder,  412-413. 
Marlborough    House    parties,    24-25, 
80-S1. 

Man:  of,  419. 

"  Marseillaise,"  the,  in  Moscow,  320. 
Maskeleyne  ai  .17. 

Mason,  Mr-.,  25. 
Materna,  134. 
Maubant,  230. 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  141,  155,  343; 
Bottle  tie  Suit,  317. 

Maxse,  Admiral,   195. 
Mayfly,  the,    III. 

Id,  Cubby,  170. 

Meistersinger,  133-34,  186. 

Membland,  life  at,  6,  8,  14.  31-42,  58- 
62,    75,    135,    137:    lines   on 
Christmas  at,  by  Godfrey  Webb, 
42-43  :     "my     path,"    55 
visitors  t",  62;  the  organ,  86 
visit  of  Willie  Coventry,   112 
Christinas  1S90,  113;  good-bye 
to,  177. 

Memnon,  temple,  169. 

Men  I  Have  Met,  Jessen,  276. 

Mendes,  Caudle,  1 .1   V 
217. 

Mensur,  the,  Heidelberg,  127 

Meredith.   126,   14S. 

Merimee,  141. 

Merrymount  Pre  n,  261, 

Metternich,  202, 
Mewstone,  the,  40. 
92. 
Mickehenko,  ( ieneral, 

-''7- 
Mikado,  .w  Frankl  rt,  1 $3  :  in  M01 
265. 

Mildm.n  ^S. 


450 


INDEX 


Mildmay,  Mr.  H.  B.,  I. 

—  Mrs.  Bingham  (Aunt  Georgie),  33- 

34,  59-60. 
Milioukov,  deputy,  340. 
Millard,  276. 
Milton,     162,     163  ;     Lycidas,     112  ; 

Paradise  Lost,  118,  127. 

—  at  Eton,  87,  89. 
Mint,  a  visit  to  the,  76. 
Mirski,  Prince,  386-87. 
Mitre,  a  dinner  at  the,  176. 
Modern  Egypt,  Lord  Cromer,  16S-69. 
Moe-tung,  village,  290. 

Moliere,  210,  230;  IS 'Avare,  114. 
Mona  Lisa,  the,  67. 
Monde  011  /'on  s'ennuie  {Le),  92. 
Mongolia,  borders  of,  313  ;  singing  in, 

35i- 

Monro,  Harold,  stories  of,  332-33. 

Monson,  Sir  Edmund,  in  Paris,  181  — 
84  ;  personality,  190. 

Montagu  House,  176. 

Monte  Carlo,  166-67. 

Monte  Cristo,  96,  105. 

Montesquiou,  Robert  de,  199  ;  on 
L'Aiglon,  203-4. 

Montgomery,  Mr.  Alfred,  15. 

Montmartre,  197. 

Moonstone  ( The),  74. 

Moore,  George,  147,  149,  155. 

Moreau,  232. 

Moritzberg,  the,  119. 

Morley,  John,  Compromise,  381. 

Morning  Post,  the  Hon.  Maurice 
Baring  correspondent  in  Man- 
churia, 268-304  ;  Whigham 
correspondence,  275  ;  Mr. 
Baring's  dramatic  criticisms, 
305  ;  Mr.  Baring  correspondent 
in  Moscow,  332  ;  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, 356,  381  ;  and  in  Turkey, 

.  395- 
Morris,  Lewis,  Epic  of  Hades,  98. 

Morsh,  Mr.,  Eton,  102. 

Moscow,  the  Kremlin,  224,  334  ; 
TestofFs  restaurant,  224 ;  life 
in,  263-64  ;  the  Art  Theatre, 
265-66,  323-24  ;  train  journey 
from  Pensa,  318-19;  the  Hotel 
Dresden,  319-20,  329  ;  the 
Emperor's  manifesto  read,  319— 
20  ;  the  Metropole  Restaurant, 
320,  323 ;  Bauman's  funeral, 
321-22  ;  the  University,  322  ; 
the  Riding  School,  322  ;  the 
Black  Gang,  322-23  ;  events  of 
December  1905,  324,  32S-29  ; 
Nikolayev  Railway  Station,  329, 


331  ;  Riask  Station,  331  ;  rooms 

of  the   Hon.  M.    Baring,   332  ; 

Easter       festivities,       334~39  ; 

markets,    338-39  ;    the  journey 

to,  363-64. 
Muscow,  River,  336,  350. 
Mothecombe  Bay,  59. 
"Mothecombe"  House,  59-60. 
Mottl,     conductor,     134,     153,      168, 

216. 
Mounts  Bay,  85. 
Mozart,  52,  186,  210. 
Mozley,  Mr.,  Eton,  103. 
Mukden,  292,  304,  362,  410  ;  Chinese 

of,  275-76  ;  life  in,  277-80. 
Mukden  Nichevo,  the,  279. 
Munkebjerg,  209. 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  184 ;  tomb  of,  94  ; 

On  ne  badine  pas  avec  r Amour, 

67  ;  Fantasio,  216  ;  Lorenzaccio, 

233- 

Nagasaki,  273. 

Nan-chin-tsa  village,  298. 

Naples,  141,  254. 

Napoleon  II.,  202-3. 

National    Observer,    Henley's    verse, 

148. 
National  Review,  articles  by  the  Hon. 

Maurice  Baring,  261. 
Naudeau,  Ludovici,  276. 
Nazerenko,  deputy,  342-43. 
Nebogatov,  Admiral,  349. 
Neckar,    the,    374 ;  view  of  the  hills, 

124. 
Neckarsteinar,  120. 
Neilsen,  52. 
Nemi,  lake  of,  259. 
Nencioni,  Professor,  praise  of  the  Hon. 

Maurice  Baring,  160. 
Neruda,  Madame,  24,  28,  42,  43,  54, 

55.  62. 
Nevill,  Lady  Dorothy,  15. 
New  Forest,  79. 
New  Statesman  1 921,  147. 
New  Witness  ( The),  editors,  395. 
New  York  World,  276. 
Newton  Ferrers,  39. 
Newton  village,  6. 
Newton  Wood,  43. 
Nicholls,  Harry,  24,  83. 
Nick,  Herr,  119,  131. 
Nietzsche,  187. 
Nijni-Novgorod,  369  ;  the  fair  at,  371  — 

73- 

Nile,  the,  374  ;  a  journey  up,  169. 
Nish,    408-10;    military    hospital   at, 
416-17. 


INDEX 


45i 


Norman   Tower,    Windsor,    ii",    114, 

117,  124. 
Normandy  I  Idtel,  91. 
North  Street  Gctutte  (  'I he),  j<(o-<c;. 
Northcotirt  ,     by    the     Hon. 

Maurice  Paring,  142. 
Mayo,  6  ;  build  church, 

34.  39-40. 
Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith,  157-58,  310. 

Notre  Dame  des  Victoires,  92,  199. 

Nozzi  di  .  211. 

Nuremberg,  133. 

r,    1  r  •. ' ; .    ' 
rc,  the,  2 

in,  309. 
Odyssiy,  Virgil,  100. 
Ohnet,  < 

92  ;  style,  151. 
(  Me,  I). me,  at  the  n,  209,  2!  ;. 

Olympia,  2;  j. 
< >lympoa,  Mount,  404. 

e    Oak,"    I  Mi>s    Ethel 

Smyth,    140. 
"Onkel   Adolph,"  119,    129,  131,  135, 

2Id. 

Opera  Houtte,  324. 

—  Comique,  93. 
Oppidans,  the,  I 

Organ-building   at  Charles  Street   and 

Memhland,  86. 
Osborne,  thi  25. 

Othello,  163  ;  Dr.  Timme  on,  127. 
Otrante,  Charlie  d',  216. 
Otway,   '  ot,  69. 

>usoff,  Princes,  24S. 
r,  at  the  Haymarket,  53. 
1 14. 

■  17 
Uxt  Us  at,  141  j  rooms  at  King 

.sad  Street,  170-72. 

Paderewsld,  211. 

Violet.     See  Lee  Vernon. 
PaUlard,  Madame,  66. 

—  Theri.se,  66. 
Paine,  1  larry,  64. 

{A),  310. 
Palatine,  the,  i 

49. 

Pamflete,  the  Btdteels1  house,  34,  58- 

59- 

167. 

Pantheon,  Paris,  92. 
Papal  <  loard,  the,  . 

I'a>\:  klU*  ,   III,   144. 
/\jr<j</'/ >  des  ■  .  67. 

Paroiiise  Los\     1 


,    childish    impn  33,   36 ; 

66,    236  ; 

th.  1  So- 207  ;  exhibi- 

tion of  1900,  199,    204;  Jardin 
d'Aodhi  1  5. 

.  Archbishop 
Parker,  AJexandi  r,  05. 
tc6. 

;  >},. 
.1  [abttt,  1 14. 
Par'sija!,   134,   153   54. 
icnon,  the,  254-55. 

,53. 
Pasolini,  Count,  248-49. 
—  Count 

Passant  (/.<-),  Coppcc,  i 
Pater,  137. 

entry,  "  1  )<le,"  193. 
Patti,  26-27,  52. 
Pechom,  Robert,  epitaph,  199. 
Pekin,  275,  277. 

•,05. 
Pensa,  317,  31S. 
Pera,  the  Little  Club,  397-98,  420. 

Lachaise,  tombs, 
Peri  u  {/.e),  140. 

Perlepe,  battle  of,  4it>. 
n,  M.,  229. 
.   167. 
Perugia,   : 

Peter,  Danish  servant,  225. 
Peterhof,  342. 
Petrukin,  deputy,  344-45. 
Phedias,  255. 
Phedre,  S  rnhardt  in,  2:7.  U    , 

231,  233.  243.  305. 
Philemoi         I     lonel,    2S3,    2S7-304 

passim. 
Philij),   Mr.,  of  the  U.S. A.    1 

420-29. 
Phillimore,  75-76. 

Piatti 
Pickwick,  reading  of,  74. 

D,  acting  « »t .  93. 
Pieterbourski  Listok,  the,  362. 
Pincio,  t  157. 

Pinero,    The  Hobby  Horse,  53:  S 
Mrs.  Tanqueray,  148,  309. 
256. 
Pitt  Club,  Cambridge,  153. 

no,  I    pe,  38. 

I'lanchette  writing,   143, 

Plarr,  140. 

Plattner  Story,  Wells,   170. 
l'lehve,  M.,    p 
Ploet/,  M.,  109. 

Plymouth,  40,  41,  45 


452 


INDEX 


Plympton,  41. 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  112. 
Pogroms,  389-90. 

Ponsonby,  Betty,  35,  54,  65,88,  no, 
112. 

—  Arthur.  65  ;  at  Eton,  88  ;  in  Berlin, 

135-37- 

—  Sir    Henry,  35,  65,    88,   124,   138  ; 

announces  result  of  the  Prince 
Consort  prize,  1 14-15  ;  quotes 
Paradise  Lost,  138. 

—  Frederick,  101. 

—  John,  65,  88. 

—  Fritz,  65. 

—  Maggie,  88. 

—  Lady,  35,  52,  65,  SS,  112,  114. 
Pope,  quoted,  201. 

Popoff,  Nicholas,  277. 

Porte  Saint  Martin  Theatre,  92. 

Porter,  Mr.,  97-98. 

Porteuse  de  Pain  (La)  ;  Zampa,  93. 

Portia,  Shakespeare's,  163. 

Potapofif,  Colonel,  275-76. 

Potemkin,  339. 

Potsdam,  129. 

Pourtales,  Madame  de,  193-94. 

Poutilov,  General,  298-99. 

Princesse  Lointaine,  243. 

Prison  ( The),  Brewster,  250,  252. 

Proces  de  Jeamie  cPArc  (Le),  233. 

Prophtie  (Le),  92. 

Prudhomme,  Sully,  article  on,  by  the 

Hon.  Maurice  Baring,  226. 
Punch,  the  "Hornets,"  171. 
Pushkin,  248  ;  prose  stories,  257. 
Pygmalion  and  Galatea,  54. 
Pyke-Nott,  83. 
Pyramids,  the,  169. 

Quiller-Couch,  149. 

Quincey,  De,  "  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows," 
3°9- 

R.Y.S.  Club,  45. 

Rachel,  52  ;  genius  of,  227-28. 

Racine,  203,  228,  230  ;  BMnice,  192- 
93  ;  resuscitated  by  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt, 243. 

Radcliffe's  (House),  Eton,  88. 

Radford,  Ernest,  149. 

Ralli,  boy,  at  Tatham's,  143. 

Ram -Head,  40. 

Ramsay,  at  Cambridge,  146. 
-  editor  of  the  Mayfly,  1 1 1. 

Rashleigh,  at  Eton,  89-90. 

Rawlins,  Mr.,  104. 

Rawlinson,  29. 

Reade,  Charles,  Foul  Play,  106. 


Reading  Biscuit  Factory,  76. 

Real    Gymnasium,    the,     Hildesheim, 

119-20,  128-29. 
Recouly,  of  the  Temps,  276. 
Reed,  German,  17. 
Reform  Club,  147. 
Regattas,  44-45.  _ 
Regnier,  M.  Henri  de,  on  parodies  by  the 

Hon.  Maurice  Baring,  194-195. 
Reichemberg,  acting  of,  92,  230. 
Rejane,  in  Zaza,  197  ;  as  Nora,  210. 
"  Rekrutskaya,"  408. 
Renaissance  theatre,  92,  233,  242. 
Renan,  parody  on,  194-95. 
Rennes  verdict,  the,  196-97. 
Residenz  Theater,  136. 
Reske,  Jean  de,  52,  92. 
Relvizan,  torpedoed,  263. 
Revelstoke  Church,  36,  40. 

—  Lady,   15,   16,  22,  27,  37,  39;  and 

Madame  Neruda,  28 ;  yacht- 
ing, 45  ;  chess-playing,  47-48  ; 
Schiller's  "Die  Glocke,"  50- 
51  ;  and  the  opera,  52-53  ;  at 
Stafford  House,  54-55  ;  a  panto- 
mime, 63-64  ;  Contrexeville, 
66  ;  the  Ascot  school,  68-69  > 
the  first  half-term  report,  73- 
75  ;  school  incidents,  76,  80- 
81  ;  Ascot  races,  79-80  ; 
the  Eastbourne  school,  84  ;  the 
organ  at  Charles  Street,  86  ;  her 
son's  confirmation,  101  ;  the 
financial  crisis,  1 13  ;  visits  to 
Eton,  114;  and  the  Prince 
Consort  Prize,  115;  death,  135. 

—  Lord,  14,  27,  47,  130,   157  ;  appre- 

ciation of  acting,  24,  51-53,  63— 
64  ;  yachting,  44  ;  versatility  of, 
50-51  ;  gifts  of,  55-56;  bigness 
of  his  character,  56-57 :  Con- 
trexeville, 65-66  ;  at  Cowes,  85  ; 
the  financial  crisis,  113  ;  death, 
177. 

Reves  de  Marguerite  (Les),  86. 

Revue  Bleu,  234. 

Rhodes,  256. 

Rhymers'  Club,  147-48 ;  Book  of  the 
Rhymers'  Club,  147,  1 49,  150; 
Second  Book  of  the  Rhymers' 
Club,  147,  150. 

Rhys,  Ernest,  149. 

Riazan  Station,  318. 

Riazhk,  318. 

Ribinsk,  368,  369. 

Ries,  Mr.,  12,  24. 

Ristori,  Madame,  227,  245-46. 

Ritchie  children,  the,  180. 


INDEX 


453 


Kitz   Hotel,  Sarah   Bernhardt   at  the,  • 

237-39- 
Robe  /  '  a),  197. 

Robert  Ma,  aire, 
Roberts,  An  ■  ar, 
Robertson,  Sir  Korbes,  2  \g, 

be,    M.,    on    the    Hon.    Maurice 
iy,  177. 
Rod,  Ed  -  u  105. 

—  sir  Rennell,  2-5. 
Koc,  Mr.,  34. 

Roebuck    shooting   in   Sonth    Ru 

89. 
Rots  ■  mattre,  233. 

Rolleston,  T.  W.,  1  | 
Roman  dt  la  Ron  \  ;;,  152. 

Rome  (t^s),  2 

Rome,  life  al  the  1  .  245,  259- 

60;  Appian   Way,   246;   Cam- 
246,    258  59 ;    Palazzo 
Anticj 
tpedi  lions, 
250  ;    the    I'mcio,    257  ;    Villa 
-58-59 ;  Tivoli,  259. 
Romney  Weir,  117. 
Ronconi,  ^2 

Rose,  Mile,  of  the/WiV*  chevaux,  66. 
etti,  1 12    1  ?9,  170. 

—  Christina, 

ini,  52. 
Rostand,  M.,  CAiglon,   199-204; 

Romanesques,  232-3;  ;  Somari- 
I  ;     the    creation    of 

}2. 

M  204. 

Rothschild  chateau,  205. 
Km  ten  Row,  25. 
i  M.,  9S. 

Rowland  bop,  95. 

Rubini,  52. 
Rudel,  Geoffroy,  244. 
Run 

Runnymei 
Raskin,  38]  ;    .    t  A.'.-.  ,;  tie  d 

River,  20;  Arthur  Benson  and, 

1 12. 
II,  Bertram,  [45. 

—  Claud,   l6<>,   168-70. 

Miss  1 

—  Miss  Maud,  62. 

Russia,  dark  nights  in  Central,  4  ;  the 

October     1.  the 

journey    to,    2l!s    [9,    201  ; 
among    ihe    inUlli.  .    264- 

65 ;      the     ~  id     the  1 

265  ;  constitutional  government 
promised,  319  ;  begmningof  the 
Revolution,     332    <t    seq.  ;    the 


K11  Petei    if,    542  ;  the 

iple  and  the  priests,  354"  55  ; 

■  !.   Stolypin's  [xjlicy, 

oiid  Duma,  367  ; 

•  uth 

Ru  the      third 

Duma,   391  on   Russian 

from,  in 
1  •.■!■.       the 

430  et  seq. 
>49- 
Ruy  Bum  ,  Hugo,  22S,  243. 

St.     fames's    Hall     concerts,     23-24, 

St.  Jan         1 

;   Mr.    Hare  at  the,  53  ;   ' 
Kendal's  acting,  310-1 1. 
ran,  church  of,  199. 
St.  Michael's  Mount, 

St.    Peter's,  246,   259-60;    Holy    Week 
253. 

St.  Petersburg,  269,  311,  324;  the 
Winter  I'alacc,  263;  Art 
Theatre,  266  ;  opening  of  the 
Duma,     339-41  :    journey    from 

>52"55  ;     :l     J,IUI 
down   • 

tantinople,  398. 
Saint  Victor,  M.  Castillon  de,  1 
St.  Vincent's  School,  Eastbourne, 
Sainte  Beuve,  1 17. 
Sainte  Chapelle, 
Saint'  92. 

foreign   policy,  166, 

I73i  '7* 

269. 

Samara,  314.  J15,  375-  33 

Samary,  acting  of,  92. 

.1,  280. 

Marino,  Duchess  of,  38. 
San  Stefano,  the  cholera  al,  419-29. 

'  15- 

Sandt  179-80. 

Santley,  Mr  ( harles, 

.s.ippho,  "Ode  to  Aphrodite,' 

,  37  j 
v.  on  Sarah   Bernhardt,  22s  29  ; 

on  Racine,  2 

141,    199  :    /' 
28  ;    Bellt   Ataman,   93  ;  pi 

5,  309  ; 
J05,  309. 
Saturday    Review,    158,    195; 

l>y   the    Hon.    Maui  ting, 

•    •'■•  -47 


454 


INDEX 


Scenes  from  Country  Life,  267. 

SckaMSpielhaus,  the,  136. 

Scheidemantel,  134. 

Scheider,  Madame,  at  San  Stefano, 
421-22,  424-29. 

Schiller,  126-27;  "Die  Glocke,"  50- 
51  ;  Wallenstein*  S  Tod,  120  ; 
Brant  von  Messina,  128  ;  com- 
pared with  Shakespeare,  163  ; 
and  Goethe,    164;  quoted,  3S2. 

Schliemann,  Dr.,  112. 

Schon,  M.,  208. 

School,  at  the  Ilaymarket,  53. 

Schools,  Russian  evening,  326-29. 

Schubert,  "  Der  Liermann,"  388. 

Schultzen,  Fraulein,  131. 

Schumann,  Clara,  335. 

Schwartz,  Lieut,  von,  276. 

Schwerin,  boy,  128. 

Scoones,  Mr.,  establishment  of,  154- 
56,  167-69. 

Scott,  Herbert,  88,  S9. 

—  Sir  Charles,  263. 

—  Sir  Walter,  49,  53,  1 12. 

Scribe  and  Legouve,  Adrienne  Lecou- 

vreur,  30S-9. 
Scyra,  256. 

Seagull,  Tchekhov,  265-66. 
Second  Mrs.    Tanqueray,   Pinero,  148, 

3°9- 
Sedan, 196. 

Servia,  occupation  of  Uskub,  414-16  ; 
patriotism,  416-17  ;  Bulgarian 
and  Servian  language  compared, 
411-12. 

Seven  Summers,  Carr-Bosanquet,  144. 

Sforza,  Catherine,  248. 

Sha-ho  river,  battle  of  the,  297-303. 

Shakespeare,  German  cult  of,  126-27  ; 
and  Schiller,  163  ;  in  Copen- 
hagen, 210;  Brewster  on  the 
production  of,  251-52  ;  Julius 
Ccesar  in  Moscow,  266 ;  Naza- 
renko's  opinion  of,  343  ;  Sonnets 

of,  365- 

Shaw,  Mr.  Bernard,  on  Mrs.  Campbell's 
acting,  157-58  ;  Dramatic  Opin- 
ions and  Essays,  234  ;  on  Mrs. 
Kendal's  acting,  311. 

She,  107. 

She  Sloops  to  Conquer,  83. 

Shelley,  110,  140,  186;  Arthur  Benson 
and,  112;  reputation,  126; 
Adonais,  161,  163  ;  grave  in 
Rome,  246. 

Shelton,  Mr.,  83. 

Sheppy,  housekeeper,  9,  27-28,  81. 

Shorthouse,  105. 


Shuvaloff,  Countess,  263. 

Sichkhov,  General,  283. 

Siddons,  Mrs.,  227. 

Simpson  of  the  Daily  Telegraph,  276. 

Singing,  Russian,  273-74,  351,  432-33. 

Sin-min-tin,  292. 

Sixtine  Chapel,  Mass  in  the,  253. 

Skat,  card  game,  124,  131. 

Slap's  band,  176. 

Sleuthhound,  cutter,  45. 

Slough,  84. 

Smielo,  388-89. 

Smith,  George,  113. 

—  Sidney,  30. 

Smyth,  Dr.,  on  Tosti's  art,  61. 

—  General,  139. 

—  Miss  Ethel,  her  Mass  at  the  Albert 

Hall,    138-39;  songs,    139-40; 

in  Copenhagen,  215  ;  Fantasio, 

216. 
Sofia,    417;  the   railway  station,  409- 

10. 
Somotka,  382. 

"Song  of  the  Scug  (The),"  in. 
Sophy,  or  the  Adventures  of  a  Savage, 

Violet  Fane,  245. 
So-shan-tse  hill,  287-90. 
Sosnofka,  visits  to,  218-24,  2^°>  3^2, 

438. 
Sothern,  Sam,  51. 
Souris  [La),  86. 
South  African  War,  236-37. 
Speaker,    the,     147,     149 ;    the    Hon. 

Maurice     Baring's     article     on 

VAiglon,  200-3. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  works,  343. 
■ —  Lady  Sarah,  68-69. 

—  Robert,  15,  135. 
Spring-Rice,  Cecil,  191,  263,  324. 
Stackelberg,  General,  288,  292. 
Stafford  House  parties,  54-55,  74. 
Stamboul,  397-400,  411. 
Standard,  the,  304. 
Stanislavsky,  M.,  265,  323. 
Stanley,  Arthur,  171. 

—  Miss  Maude,  62. 
Steamers  of  the  Volga,  375-76. 
Stephen,    J.     K.,    poem  by,    in  ;   at 

Eton,  112. 
Stevenson,    R.    L.,    53,    105-7,    137, 

185  ;  Ebb  Tide,  148  ;  saying  of, 

quoted,  437-38. 
Stewart,  at  Eton,  89. 
Stolypin,      M.,      332  ;    and     Russia's 

future,  341-42;  policy  of,  356— 

57  ;  Count  Witte  on,  368. 
"Stop-shorts,"  313. 
Story-tellers,  Russian,  272-73. 


INDEX 


455 


Strong,  Arthur,  and  the  Dreyfoi 
1S5  86 ;  on  L'Aigbm,  204. 
Studd,  at  Eton,  10 ;   1. 
Students'  Humour  (7Tu),  III. 

Stomp  Debating  Society,  143. 

Stunner,  Mis-.  Van,  22. 

Sucher,  Rose,  154. 

Sudermann,    Did   Ehre,    136;   Ma 

Sully,  Mounet,  92,  230. 

Sunflower  season  in  Russia, 

Sunium,  255. 

Surley,  95. 

Sveab  irg,  362. 

Swinburne,    126,    137,    139,  170,   i 

I  102,       114; 

A.'alanta    in     Cafyaon,     112; 

Astro/  .  -< :    opinions  on, 

155  ;  Jowett  and,  304. 
Switzerland,  appreciation,  130. 

/<  and  Bruno,  180. 
Symons,  Arthor,  147-40,  155. 

Tauchn.  Q,  154,  370. 

e,  meeting  of  the   Duma 
in,  339-40. 

Lioni,  Madame,  26. 
Tame,    186  ;     /  'oyagt   at 

114;  article  on,    by    M.    Harry, 
226. 

'  •  -97- 
Tab  ^98. 

Tambov,  380  Bl. 
Tamburmi, 

Tannhause> ,  120,  134,  153,  162. 
1,  Lily,  142. 

-Mi.    1  r.uik,  99. 

battlefield  of,  280  Bl, 

.  1 20. 

Tatham,  Mr.,   142-43. 
taldja,  419. 

',  264  ;  ]ilays  of,  265- 
68. 
—  /  ;  Chaika,  $25. 

labinsk,  352-53. 
■drinking  in  1  ^50. 

Tempi*    Bar,     poem    by    the     11  • 

Maurice  Baring,  1 13. 
Temple,  Bishop,  4". 
Temps,  the,  270. 
Tennyson.   1 10,  126,  I4S,  150;   ' 

Queen,"  56. 

hour  meeting  .it,  345  47. 

Terry.    Ellen,    SI  -'•  ;   U 

of  th<-  /»'  (  Hardy,  i;\ 

Thackeray,   Vanity  Fair,  112. 
/hakrs,  reckoning  by,  129. 


"Tru  161-63. 

Greatest  of  These,  3 10. 
1  Intotne,  197, 

I  1  140, 

192 

ion  with,  22s  31. 
-  a.ih  licrnhardt,  . 
'■   '    ,  163. 
I,  231. 
I      cis,     1  he    Hound   of 
Heaven,  150. 

:.,   Mr.,  39. 
Thought i  on   Art  ifdfl 

I  Vinci,  260-61. 
Tillet,  M.J. 

Times  (Tie),  115,  127,  163.  247,418; 
the   Hon.    Maurice  Baring  and, 

rimme,    Dr.,    house   of,    IlS-19,     1 

12^  6o-6i,  172- 

73  ;  on  the  English  poets,  126- 
72  ;  death,  1 76. 

Todhunter,  John,  149. 

Todten-In>cl. 

Tolstoy,  137.  219,  235.  24S  ;   Wat 

Peace,  168  ;  To.  arkness, 

210;    Nazarenko's  opinion  of, 

343- 
—  Al  far,  257 

Toole,  art  of,  5 1. 

Mr.,  carpenter,  7  \ 
Tosca  (/  rdt  in,  107-8, 

rosti,  art  of,  61. 
Toula,  315. 

Tour.  .  .       .-50. 

1  maid,  at  Halliol,  171    72,   1S0. 

Transbaikalian  railway,  311. 

Trai  a     railway,     cxperiei. 

-7/.314. 

rraverso,  Madame,  140,  156-59. 

Treasure  Island,  50,  74. 

Trebelli, 

I  Svengali,  310. 

reneral,  ; .  1 
Trea 

it,  145. 

Trianon,  206. 

Triolets,  142 

Trollop,  . 

I 
.  relic  ot  the, 
1      ritsina,     near    Moscow,      uj, 

Si. 

Tudgay,  Mr..,  3^.3,,,  42,  fa, 
Turgenier,  431. 


456 


INDEX 


Turkish  character,  425-27. 

—  Red  Crescent,  422,  427-28  ;  British 

unit,  427-28. 
Turkey,  Revolution  of  May  1909,  395, 

397-98. 
Turin,  169. 
Tasini,  Mile,  66. 
Tver,  368. 
Twain,  Mark,  in  German,  223. 

['a  be  arable  Bassington  (The),  333. 

Uncle  Vania,  Tchekhov,  266-69. 

Ushitai,  town  of,  312. 

Uskub,  407,  410,  411  ;  Serbian  oc- 
cupation, 412-17,  Hotel  de  la 
Liberte,  413. 

Vandal,  Albert,  199. 

Vandyk  in  Lohengrin,  153. 

Vardar  river,  the,  413. 

Vassili,  coachman,  326. 

Vaudeville,  the  Paris,  265. 

Vaughan,  Kate,  24. 

Vaux,  chateau  of,  206. 

Venice,  141  ;  nights  in,  4. 

Verdi,  52  ;  Otello,  120. 

Verlaine,   Paul,    139;  poetry  of,    184; 

Brewster  on,  250-51. 
Verne,   Jules,    49  ;    Michael  Strogoff, 

220. 
Verrall,  Dr.,  on  Boileau,  152  ;  stories 

by,  152-53- 

Versailles,  92,  153,  198. 

Vesuvius  Mount,  167. 

Viatka,  358. 

Victoria,  Queen,  8  ;  Jubilee,  85,  176  ; 
opens  New  Schools  at  Eton, 
108  ;  bestows  the  Prince  Consort 
prize  on  the  Hon.  Maurice 
Paring,  1 14— 1 5  ;  a  story  of 
Prince  Albert  and,  131  ;  funeral 
procession,  215-16. 

Victix    Paris   (Le),    reconstruction  of, 

93- 

Vigny,   Alfred  de,    203  ;    Cinq  Mars, 

114. 
Villa  Felseck,  124-25. 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da,    Thoughts  on  Art 

and  Life,  260-61. 
"  \  inch,"  game  of,  374,  387. 
Virginia  water,  76. 
Visile  de  Noces  (La),  Duse  in,  308. 
Vogt,  Heinrich  (Tristan),  134. 
Vogue,  Melchoir  de,  195. 
Volga,  ajourney  down  the,  368  ;  aspect 

beyond  Nijni,  374  ;  towns  of  the 

Upper,  378-79- 
Vologda,  a  journey  to,  358-66. 


Voltaire,  Zaire,  229. 
Voronezh,  401. 
Vranja,  412. 

Wagner,     52,     133-35  !     Tannhiiuser, 

120;    Arthur   Strong  on,    186; 

Vernon    Lee   on,     186-87  ;    in 

Copenhagen,  210. 
Wagram,  battle  of,  202. 
Waldorf  Theatre,  Duse  at  the,  305. 
Wales,      Prince     of    (Edward     vn.), 

marriage,  25  ;  in  Paris,  193. 

—  Princess,    24-25,    parties   at    Marl- 

borough House,  54-55,  80. 

Walkley,  Mr.,  149  ;  on  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt, 232-33. 

Wallace,  Lew,  Ben  Hur,  106. 

Wallington,  38. 

War  and  Peace,  Tolstoy,  168. 

Ward,  Arnold,  170;  at  Eton,  III; 
Arthur  Benson  and,  112. 

—  Mrs.       Humphry,       ill;      Robert 

Elsmere,     106  ;   David   Grieve, 

148. 
Warre,  Dr.,  at  Eton,  14,  46,  81,  99. 
Warsaw,  218-19. 
Wasp,  steam  launch,  45. 
Waterlooville,  home  of  Cherie,  114. 
Waterwitch,  the  yacht,  44-45,  85. 
Watson,  Mr.,  butler,  27. 

—  William,  poems,  147-48,  157. 
Watteau,  at  the  Louvre,  67. 
Watts,  exhibitions,  56. 

Webb,  Godfrey,  62  ;  lines  on  Christ- 
mas at  Membland,  42-43. 

Wells,  Mr.  H.  G.,  History  of  the 
World,  47  ;  Plattner  Story,  1 70  : 
Food  of  the  Gods,  285. 

Weslmacott,  Lady,  427. 

Westminster  Abbey,  underground  pass- 
age to,  390. 

Westminster  Gazette,  333. 

Westwater,  Dr.,  280,  282. 

When  we  Dead  Awaken,  211. 

When  William  Came,  333. 

Whibley,  Charles,  148. 

Whigham,  correspondent,  275. 

Whyte-Melville,  48,  106. 

Wigans,  the,  51. 

Wilde,  Oscar,  324  ;  Lady  Winder- 
mere's  Pan,  148. 

Wildenbruch,  Count,  208. 

Williams,  stationer,  Eton,  95,  1 17. 

Wilton,  Marie  (Mrs.  Bancroft),  53. 

Winchester  match,  the,  112. 

Windsor,  Norman  Tower,  65,  87-88  ; 
shops,  95  ;  St.  George's  Chapel, 
103. 


INDEX 


457 


Wippern,  Eric,  161,  175.  ?"• 

—  Han  .  1  |2  33,  161. 

Witchcraft,  in  MOSCOW,  349-5°- 
Witte,  Count,  332  ■.  u  with,  367. 

\V !,  I 

—  Francis, 

Worms,  93. 

Worthington,  schoolfellow,  70,  79. 

Wrest,  167-68. 

Wyndham,  Mr.  Percy,  62. 

—  Mrs,  Pi  rcy,  62. 

Vantai,  battle  "f,  295-96. 

Yapsley,  Mr.,  40. 

{63—64,  ' 
Yashville,  Prince,  389. 


11  River,  6,  39.  44- 
VeaknpJ 

,  W.  B.,  149-50- 

(  The),    147  :   article 

Aii.u..:  jf    the    1! 

Maw  1 57- 

49- 

ll     li  Iberg,  135. 

: 

Zacchoni,  actor,  311. 

;m-I2. 
Zaire t  Voltaire,  - 
[97. 

ini,  2.\. 
Zhilkin,  M.,  346. 
h  J^3.  343- 


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